Pere Ubu this Saturday!

Once again, folks, legendary avant-garagists Pere Ubu play the Biltmore this Saturday, with Ford Pier Vengeance Trio opening... early show, Ubu will take the stage around 9:30... They're driving through some pretty fierce weather to get here, so go see them! My interview with David Thomas here... other tour dates here...

Frustration Dream

I just had a dream where I blew a gasket at a restaurant.

I was eating lunch at a Robson Street restaurant that shall remain nameless. But they're a real restaurant, somewhat upscale, where I did actually often have lunch. My server, it happens, was a friend of mine (he was not actually someone who really worked at this restaurant; he was, in fact, Joe, former owner of Haney Books. Hi, Joe!).

I ordered several items, but had an emergency phone call that required my immediate attention. I gave my server two easy instructions: I have to run off. I will come back in fifteen minutes. Make the last two items to go, and I'll deal with the bill when I get back.

I ran off. I went to another building, saw some students of mine, noticed a very sick crow on a ledge, and did whatever it was I had to do. (I don't recall this part, the emergency mission).

I ran back to the restaurant, saw my friend the server, getting off shift. He reminded me to pick up a shopping bag I'd left, which I'd forgotten about entirely.  I thanked him, went back inside, got my bag, paid the bill, which came to $63, and left a $12 tip - larger than I might have otherwise, since I'd had to run off.

Then I remembered that I had two items coming that I had paid for and never received. I told the waitress and she began to prevaricate - we didn't prepare them, since you weren't here, but you can come back at the end of the day and pick them up.

No, no, that's not what I want. I have to be at work in five minutes, then I have to catch a train home... I was going to give the food to my mother, who I take care of in Maple Ridge... I can't come back after work...

Well, sorry, the dishes aren't ready and we have other customers to think of...

Arrgh! I just tipped you over $10! Wait, there's the solution: just refund me the cost of the two dishes; I'll figure something else out for Mom.

The waitress agreed that that would solve everything, but for reasons unclear to me, since both items - a soup and a salad, apparently - had prices on the menu - began to weigh a glass of water to determine what to charge me. Somewhere in there, she also drank a shot of milk in front of me and then opened her mouth to reveal VAMPIRE FANGS. What?

I began to explain in increasing panic that I had to be at work (my old job as an ESL teacher, which I apparently was still doing). A second server stepped in and began to try to help but for some reason was having just as much difficulty with calculating the bill. I began to raise my voice - just use the prices in the menu!

The manager stepped over and asked if something was wrong.

I exploded in frustration. I spent the last five minutes of my sleep screaming at the top of my lungs (in my head) about my refund, the lack of need to weigh anything to calculate it, and my urgent need to get to work. I basically screamed myself awake, internally.

I have no idea why this dream visits me now. What is frustrating me? Money I have been counting on and have been told is coming has not yet arrived, and I am once again over-extended on my credit card to get me through the weekend (which I did reluctantly on the belief that said $$$ would arrive yesterday). My carpet got wet due to a shower mishap last Friday and a patch of it, I discover on returning home, seems to be rotten and stinky. No idea what to do or how expensive that will be to fix. My girlfriend is sick and has a sore foot; my Mom needs my time and company; and my father is gone. I have eczema on my fingers. I live in a town I kind of hate, I haven't had a "real" job since 2010, and I have writing work I am falling behind on, some of which I will be only barely paid for (or have already been paid for and spent the money). My cellphone is malfunctioning terminally, doing all sorts of spastic things, but at the moment I can't afford to replace it. I also cannot find the blue squeezy thing for my Aircast moonboot (see below), can't find my BCID to boot, and have a big pile of junk paper on my floor that I have to sort out from where I was searching for both, which I haven't made time to deal with (I could have done it last night, but chose to complete my first Sudoku instead, which was interesting, but took two hours). Meantime, that re-habilitated pair of Blundstones I mentioned? There's a hole in one, it turns out, which I didn't realize until walking through a puddle yesterday. 

I want a refund! I want my fucking refund! 

RIP Colin Wilson

I haven't read a lot of Colin Wilson, truth be known. I have his book on Wilhelm Reich on my shelves, and I recently enjoyed the heck out of Tobe Hooper's adaptation of his novel Space Vampires, Lifeforce. I have not read The Outsider or The Occult, his two major works, and I don't know that I ever will.

However: I absolutely loved his novel The Mind Parasites. As I recall, it takes a very deliberately Lovecraftian premise - archaeologists unearthing an ancient civilization and making a frightening discovery about an ancient malign force that awakens to menace them - and updates it for the drug culture: the force is an alien entity that exists inside human consciousness, living parasitically off negative emotions, preventing people from realizing their true potential, and our intrepid adventurers must do battle with it by taking hallucinogens and descending into their psyches! Spooky as heck, but brilliant, and very thought-provoking - a great little science fiction novel.

Anyhow, sad to report that Colin Wilson died today at the age of 82. My condolences to those who knew him, or admired his work. (My apologies and respects to Nelson Mandela, Junior Murvin, Barry Jackson, and Aube - AKA Nakajima Akifumi, apparently recently deceased, though Wikipedia has not caught up with that fact yet... I simply have nothing of personal moment to contribute to the memorials, though I sure did enjoy the Clash's cover of "Police and Thieves").

Pere Ubu: David Thomas interview

Pere Ubu plays the Biltmore December 14th, so I finally did a David Thomas interview. I wish he'd explained what a dull machine was! Those unfamilar with Pere Ubu might want to start here - my favourite song off the new album, relevant to the article, and a clip sanctioned by the band (it was Robert Wheeler who directed me to it). Datapanik In The Year Zero, The Modern Dance, and Dub Housing are also unquestionably essential, so check'em out. See you at the Biltmore (the Ford Pier Vengeance Trio opens, and - contrary to some reports - it's supposed to be an early show, running from 8pm-11, with the club clearing out to turn into a pumpkin or a disco or something thereafter).

Nude with boots!

So my girl has a sore foot - maybe a stress fracture. I know how long it can take for a foot injury to heal, especially when you have to work 9-5 and are constantly on your feet, so I gave her my old Aircast boot, to keep the pressure off it, back from when I had my own foot injury.

Problem: I seem to have misplaced the "blue squeezy thing," as I'm calling it, by which you increase the pressure on your foot by hand-pumping air into a nozzle. So here I am, in one of those fits of cleaning up that occasionally precede settling down to a project (which I used to think of as a form of procrastination, but have come to embrace as a damn good habit), and, in particular, I'm trying to sort out areas of my apartment where it is more likely that said blue squeezy thing might be (Closet A, Closet B, somewhere in the debris scattered around my desk, or perhaps buried under the mound of papers and CDRs and miscellany on the kitchen table? Well, no, I've gone through that - it ain't there). I may well have forgotten what the blue squeezy was and thrown it out ("obviously I don't need it anymore if I don't remember its function"); I'm not at all confident that I'm going to find it. All the same, en route, I'm sorting out a lot of chaos and clutter, and finding useful things that I didn't realize I had (like two pairs of slacks with no holes in the pockets, no splits up the crotch, and flies that work! I am suddenly two pairs of pants richer!). So it all counts as a productive way to not do that more important work that I'm allowing myself to avoid.

Then suddenly - isn't that the box that I bought my last pair of Blundstones in? Hmm. Could it be that when I bought my new Blundstones, I put my old ones in it? It sure feels heavy enough... oh could it be?

Here's the thing. No intent to complain, but contrary to the Australian Boot Company's advertising slogan of "Blundstones for life," I've found that these boots, much as I like them, last about three years maximum before something splits or cracks or rots. That's fine by me - "Blundstones for three years" is still a good deal, given their modest price. Plus my boots would probably last longer if I only took better care of them. My second pair - the so called "new" pair - has a large split along the seam between boot and sole on the right foot, which wore through sometime last spring. I seemed to recall, at that time, that the first pair I owned - the ones I replaced - had a split on the other foot. Which meant, perhaps, if I could find the old boots, I could match up the two good ones - one right, one left - and have boots again (for awhile, anyhow). 

I couldn't find the fucking old boots anywhere, of course. I looked everywhere last spring - or so I thought. Maybe I threw them out, too? Then seeing the Blundstone box in the corner of my closet, completely ignored by me for years, it was like - aha! And indeed, the old boots are inside, and the splits are on different boots, so I have a working pair of Blundstones again! The old ones need a bit of polish, but - so what?

The reason I'm naked in the photo below, by the way, is entirely incidental: I have to take a bath. In my eagerness to capture my joy at my boot-find, I did not bother to put on clothes to snap this pic And of course, it's best to stay naked while I polish my, uh, "third" pair of Blundstones, lest I get polish on my clothes. Hence: nude with boots.

No reference to the Melvins should be inferred.

Charles Mudede on Let the Fire Burn, plus You Can't Win

Charles Mudede on one of the most impressive/ powerful docs at the VIFF, Let the Fire Burn... And while I'm at it, for those who missed it, Charles posted on Facebook today that his much anticipated new collaboration with Sean Kirby and Robinson Devor, an adaptation of You Can't Win, is now in the can! Unbelievably, it co-stars James Hong. I'll let you figure out if he is better remembered for the role of David Lo Pan in Big Trouble in Little China or the "I just do eyes" guy in Blade Runner, but he's definitely NOT someone I would have assumed was still alive, let alone working. The guy is one year older than my Mom (who turns 83 today - happy birthday, Mom!).

Red Herring Rises Again!

Attention Red Herring fans: a second reunion gig takes place December 23rd at the Railway Club! (Not in any way a typical Red Herring song, but check out "5 Billion People" from their Prophouse gig last month - the funkiest, funniest little ditty about overpopulation you ever heard, and apparently the only upload from that night - with thanks to Mzcool Gurrl, whomever she may be!).

Let's Put the 'Ist' Back Into Christmas

Every time I ask David M. about his upcoming solo album, to be entitled Now Is Not The Time, he assures me that it is a real thing that he is working on. Given the title, and the fact this conversation has been taking place for five or six years now, I have my moments of doubt about that. And of course, now he has announced a No Fun Alone at Christmas concert while insisting in every poster I've seen that No One Will Be Admitted. Don't ask me, I do not know.

However, he has a new Christmas song! (Actually recorded last January, but still, this is its first Christmas in public, far as I know). It joins the many videos David has loaded onto Youtube, including "Christmas Is A Sad And Lonely Time," "It's Frightful," and the not-actually-uploaded-by-him, but-still-thematically-relevant "Wookie For Christmas." And this, of course, featuring "Celebrate Like Us" as done by the David M./ Paul Leahy/ Pico lineup (whom I saw around this time, opening for Robyn Hitchcock at the Town Pump - my earliest encounter with No Fun in concert, and the night where the band performed a version of Cat Stevens' "Moonshadow" with new lyrics about being followed by an armed Muslim... a joke that I perhaps do not need to explain?

More Abstract Expressionist Cellphone Photography

Often I need to be doing something with my cellphone, especially on transit. It's a near obsolete (ie. two years old?) Samsung Intensity, with no games on it and no real capacity to access the internet (it's possible, but very clunky and kinda expensive so I just don't try); I can text my girlfriend or a couple of buddies but often the urge to fiddle is stronger than texting can satiate. So I take photos. At night, on the bus, when there's no chance of getting a good photo of anything much in the dark, I have fun by jiggling the camera as I snap pictures of streetlights, store signs, neon, and Christmas lights.

Some of my favourites from this week:

Dreams of my father and I, singing together

Sometimes I get dreams where I'm with my father. (The day before yesterday was the fourth anniversary of his death).

Last night, he and I were taking a road trip together. I forget most of it but when my cell phone alarm went off, he was driving the car he used to drive when I was a little kid - a white American Rambler - and we were on the backroads coming back from Alouette Lake, I think. He started singing CCR's version of "Cotton Fields," a song he used to actually sing aloud sometimes, and I joined in on the second verse and we were singing together... It was a good moment and has lingered...

So cold I can *photograph* my breath

Frank Frink 5 to play LanaLou's this Friday!

Not sure if the Frank Frink 5 count as part of the Vancouver "fuck band" tradition or not but it's a great night of country music, rock covers, and unexpected playfulness from various Vancouver punks, doing things they normally would not do in public. For those who wonder who is who, the FF5 are:

Butch Norland - vocals & acoustic guitar -aka- Nick Jones
Billy Clyde Frink - vocals, electric guitar & double neck steel guitar -aka- Randy Carpenter
Mink Frink - electric guitar & vocals-aka- Scott McLeod
Stinkin' Tim Connors - drums & vocals-aka- Jon Card
Jellybean Beaudine - bass guitar & vocals -aka- Bob Petterson
Dash Schmidt - keyboard & vocals -aka-Gord Nicholl


Clip of them playing a very twangy "Sympathy for the Devil" with guest vocalist Brian D Roche here....

Lee Ranaldo, Pere Ubu: concerts in December

I have always hated the idea of early concerts, with venues being emptied out at 11pm so that the bar can turn into a disco, but these days it means I can get back to Maple Ridge on the last bus, without having to impose on anyone (or sell my girlfriend on a band she might not want to see). So I guess I don't mind them so much now. Thanks to this practice, I might just be able to check out out the Lee Ranaldo and Pere Ubu shows at the Biltmore this month (Dec.7th and 14th, respectively). I like the new Lee album a lot; it has a wonderful energy to it - glowing, glistening psych-pop craftsmanship, with fellow SY member Steve Shelley on drums. I haven't come to terms with the new Pere Ubu yet but "Musicians Are Scum" is absolutely brilliant - that's a sample from the Chambers Brothers "Time Has Come Today," and it greatly complicates David Thomas' lyrics, if you're aware of how utterly screwed over Lester Chambers has been...

Ron Reyes vs. Black Flag

The whole world that cares has already weighed in on social media, but I'm avoiding cleaning the kitchen and thought I might as well register my thoughts on Ron Reyes' being ejected from Black Flag just a couple weeks before their new album is due out. 

I didn't attend the recent Vancouver Black Flag concert, but I had very fond memories of seeing Ron Reyes belt out classic Black Flag songs at his 50th birthday gig at the Rickshaw in 2010, which event heralded his first performance with Greg Ginn in decades. I've seen Piggy a few times since then, and spoken to Ron for the Straight on a couple of occasions; my impression is that he's a sincere, conscientious man, and a genuinely nice guy, who happens to have some of the most fearsome punk rock vocal cords around. News of various lawsuits and other nastiness emanating from the Black Flag reunion has made me feel kinda bad for Reyes, made me wonder how he was weathering things. Not so well, it turns out.

Hearing now that he's been booted from Black Flag - and reading his statement online - makes me think he's probably better off. Still, there are rumours floating around that the new album, What The..., is going to be delayed and his vocals re-recorded by this Mike V. guy... It's just a rumour, but the fact that the official digital distribution of the album has suddenly stopped suggests that there might be something to it. It would be really, really wrong, of course, but then, Greg Ginn seems hell-bent on destroying any enthusiasm people might have for his band or their music. Replacing the one member of the band whom everyone has been unanimous in praising actually manages to one-up the douchiness of those lawsuits (which he lost, by the by). I'm not sure what more he could do, at this point, to make things worse for himself - rip up a photo of the Pope on national TV? License "My War" to be used in a Adidas commercial? ...Maybe he should sue himself for sabotaging his own fucking band....

Of course, whatever happens, the album, What The..., has been circulating on the net for weeks now, and won't ever go away - like the 1982 Black Flag My War demos, with Chuck Biscuits on drums, it's out there for anyone who cares to find. Sadly, it's only half-good (or three quarters, at best). It has some terrific driving energy - and some surprising funkiness - and both Ginn's guitar and Reyes' vocals are very cool, but the songs sound wayyy too samey for any to stand out or become classics. I mean, there's a song called "Shut Up" where the chorus is "Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!" Then a few songs later, there's a song called "Go Away" where the chorus is "Go away! Go away! Go away!" A surplus of ideas they clearly did not have. I mean, maybe it will grow on me, but even if it does, at this point, Greg Ginn has pretty much soured me on supporting anything Black Flag does ever again. Just as well that I already own as many SST albums as I care to...

My condolences to Ron Reyes, though. (I like the cover art - that's Ron's drawing, apparently!). 

Attack of "Against The Wind"

Ah, Maple Ridge.

Found myself wandering through our cultural mecca, Haney Place Mall, earlier today. I had hoped that some store in town might have the much-buzzed, recently released documentary Blackfish on DVD. Or maybe Brian De Palma's Passion. The library hasn't gotten them in. Little Shop of Movies (the one video rental store in Maple Ridge proper, now under new ownership) did not have them; nor did London Drugs. So I figured I would make a cursory look in our newly opened Target, replacing the Zellers at said mall, and while I was at it, do a scan of Target's mall neighbour, Gamer's Choice, which was unlikely to have Blackfish or Passion but might have something else of note. (They're a little game-and-DVD shop run by a bunch of Middle Eastern guys, who now have a few thousand DVDs, ill-sorted, mostly priced at $3.99; occasionally I find a weird gem there, something I'm not looking for but can't resist at a low price, like today's find, Return of Sabata).

Anyhow, Haney Place is this town's Dawn of the Dead mall: it's all senior citizens, gangstas, white trash, and various variations on the suburban bungled and the botched, all of us slouching along, feeling superior to each other, getting in each other's way, scrounging for deals, searching for something (community? fellowship? a home?) that we have bugger all chance of finding, especially since we all mistrust each other. There's probably no single more depressing place to congregate in this town - maybe the high school, maybe the strip club - but all the same, there's seldom a week that goes by without seeing me in it two or three times, picking up groceries, buying my Mom scratch and wins, or just passing through to scan the shelves at Gamer's Choice, seeing the same old movies that were there the week before, and the week before that. Aside from the odd gem I dig out of there, or good deals on groceries at the Thrifty's, almost any unexpected experience I have at Haney Place Mall is bound to be negative, a reminder that there's "nothing but the dead and dying" in my little town. A horrifying whiff of perfume on a blue haired old lady, a glimpse of a fat guy's ass crack as he bends to lift a crate of whatever, the persistent screaming of a baby, the tobacco clouds around the teenagers who cluster in the doorways, or just the sagging, ugly flesh and sour expressions everywhere you look... As I walk through the mall, I try to keep my eyes on the path ahead of me, try not to take in what passes for humanity, unless I'm feeling singularly misanthropic and want to nurture a hate-on. Pretty much anything I *do* notice evokes a wince - an inward one, since I don't want anyone to see my reactions. Never let them know what you're thinking: I wonder how many other fellow mall-shoppers feel exactly the same way?

Today's cause for wincing was musical: hearing Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band's "Against The Wind" over the mall PA. Not that that's the worst song you're likely to hear at a suburban mall, but it was really quite striking, since I can remember that same song - hardly a huge hit, hardly a classic, hardly anything that should have any real longevity or appeal to anyone - playing in town in 1980, when it was released. That was the year before Haney Place Mall opened, as it happens, but no doubt I've heard it over their PA before, god knows how many times. I liked the song when I was aged 12, but only because I didn't know much better - I dug Billy Joel and Styx back then, too. I don't have anything against "Against The Wind" now, either, really - it's as good an example of banal, hopelessly Caucasian, risk-free AM radio musical mediocrity as can be found without involving a member of the Eagles, but it's not in any way actively offensive to me; it's mostly just dull. Still, what's striking is that 33 years since it debuted, that same fucking song is still playing over the speakers at the mall, like it was somehow still relevant, like, of all the music of the world that has ever been made, either before 1980, or since; in spite of the vast explosion of musical awareness brought on by the internet, the bizarre wealth of options at anyone's easy disposal - Bob Seger's "Against The Wind" is somehow the truest expression of what Haney Place Mall is about. It gave me a moment of pause, thinking about the time warp this town seems to be stuck in. What kind of limits would you have to place on human experience, taste, knowledge for someone to not realize somewhere between 1980 and now that there's a wider world of cultural expression than is captured by that Bob Seger song, that there is, in fact, better music to be played? What lobotomized consensus reality would one have to be living in for that song to actually somehow be a thing of comfort and familiarity? What can you say about a town where hearing "Against The Wind" over the PA at the mall counts, in 2013, as a "normal" experience? I mean, at least they could have played "Turn The Page"...

Oh: and Target didn't have Blackfish (or Passion) either.

Al's cabinet of shame

I have long maintained a section in the bottom corner of my DVD shelves for movies that I want to keep around, but am embarrassed to be associated with or seen with. For instance: I have all four Rambo films, the first because it's an interesting piece of cinema from a Canadian director, and filmed in my hometown; the second because I revisited it in preparing to interview the director's son; the third because it has a plot that involves US relations with the mujahadeen in Afghanistan, decades before 9/11 - which makes it a historical curiosity at the very least;  and the fourth because it's such a bloody, brutal, ridiculously intense exploitation film that it shocked the heck out of me on first viewing and I think I'd like to get around to it again sometime, just to see if it's as vicious as I recall ("Rambo goes splatter"). I also have - don't tell anyone - various DVDs involving Bruce Willis, Clint Eastwood,  Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Mel Gibson, none of whom I am keen to be associated with as a cinephile, even though I have reasons for keeping all around - including, in some cases, that I have genuine fondness for the film in question, guilty pleasure or no. I mean, the director's cut of Payback is one of the most successful attempts to put a Parker novel on screen, in my opinion - not that it's the best film made from a Parker book, which would obviously be Point Blank, but it's by far the most "Parker" of them...

Anyhow, tonight I came up with a novel solution, while reorganizing my shelves: put the ones I don't want to be known by in the closed cabinet where I keep my porn! (I have a few porn DVDs, what can I say). As I was doing it, a deep sense of the rightness of my action came to me, because, after all, most of the output of Mel Gibson, Bruce Willis, Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Clint Eastwood IS a sort of pornography - a validation of the male ego, a phallus-worshipping variation on themes of "the-man-is-always-right/ nobody-understands-me-but-I'm-really-a-hero" ego gratification, which is in a way its own form of masturbation. Die Hard is porn for the male ego; Beverly Hills Cox is porn for a lower organ. I am suddenly very pleased with my cabinet of shame, and happy to no longer having my Rambos out in plain sight...

Transit safety: someone poll me

There is apparently a poll underway about how riders feel about transit safety in Vancouver. I have just posted the following comment after a News1130 article on said poll. I wonder how many people agree with this?

The scariest aspect of any Skytrain commute is when cops with guns get on board. I have never felt threatened by any of my fellow commuters, no matter how stinky or rude or weird they might have been; but the moment a cop gets on board, visibly armed, I become quite aware of the possible threat - that there could be an incident between one of the cops and a commuter, or that a gun could get drawn or fired or swiped by a lone loony, all of which, in the close quarters of a moving skytrain car could be quite an issue. There's also a menacing "you are living in a police state" aesthetic to the experience ("fare evaders line up against the wall!") that feels far more intimidating than reassuring.

I suppose I could live with cops on the trains - I'm not sure they're necessary, but I imagine they're a fact of life now. Still, I would feel much safer if there were no guns involved. 

Why do I get the feeling that that's not the sort of answer they're looking for, here?

Christmas Alone In No Fun City Approacheth

I missed David M's Christmas Alone In No Fun City last year, but this year, I intend to go, and to bring my gal! Unless we can't get in (no, I have no special insight into David's "No One Will Be Admitted" marketing strategy). I realize that having a guest with me is sort of going against the spirit of Christmas ALONE, but at least it might dissuade David from sitting in my lap this year.

So far I have not yet received a "normal" gig poster, with, like, venue information and dates, but I have received various pre-posters. I neglected to post them right away, but here, now, is the David M. Christmas Alone In No Fun City 2013 gallery... Further updates as they arrive! 

Fumbling with thoughts on the internet

Thinking about the internet, and how an excess of anything devalues it.

This started because Robin Bougie shared an article on Facebook about how comic book prices have depreciated in recent years. It's an interesting piece of writing - but it doesn't really delve as deeply as it might into the role the internet has played in this devaluation.

I remember, some twenty years ago - when I was working occasionally, then as now, in used book and record stores, and always keeping an eye open when thrifting for books and records of value - that there were price guides to rare books and records that the store owners and I would frequently consult to determine the price of items. That was in the age of the hypermodern first edition - books that were only ten or fifteen years old were fetching collectors' prices; since these guides were too hefty to carry, I remember phoning Tim Carson, the bookdealer I sometimes work for, to look up various books, including some relatively recent ones, in case they were worth money ("I'm at a Salvation Army and there's a first US of a Carl Hiassen and William Montalbano collaboration called Powder Burn for one dollar... could you look it up?"). There were, in fact, quite a few copies of many such books in existence, but not so many that you were likely to find them in a bookstore near you. Things like Abebooks, eBay, Amazon and so forth didn't exist to give you instant access to hundreds of copies of any given book worldwide, so it didn't matter if those hundreds of copies existed; when you encountered one in your local used and antiquarian bookstore, if it was a book you truly cared about, wanted in your collection, the price you were willing to pay would be based on your sense of the likelihood of stumbling across that particular item ever again; and the price the bookseller would be asking - based itself on price guides drawn on research about what people had paid for the book in the past, at bookstores and auctions and so forth - would reflect the same conditions. A lot of not-really-that-rare books got treated like they were rare, because people simply didn't have easy access to them.

The internet changed all that radically: scarcity value still applies, but a lot of things once considered scarce, simply aren't.

One book I remember in particular - not because it's a particularly good example of hypermodernity, but because I found it at a Value Village and bought and sold it for a nice profit - was the UK hardcover first edition of Dick Francis' Odds Against, published in 1965. As I recall, at the time I bought it, the Ahearn price guide listed its value, in nice shape, at $250; I sold it to a bookdealer for something like $85, and he in turn sold it himself to a collector for quite a bit more than that. The total number of copies of that book hasn't changed since that time (the late 1990s) - it's not like more copies of it were discovered in a storage locker, or such, making a scarce item commonplace. But the phenomenon of the the internet has made access to the existing copies in bookstores worldwide so much better that said storage locker scenario might as well be the case: because suddenly - if you go on Abebooks, for instance - there are literally fifty copies of that very edition of the book for you to choose from. Some are signed; some are in near fine condition; some are ex-library and damaged. The prices reflect a crazy range (running from $25 to $1000), with lots of copies in collectible condition for under $200. With so many to choose from, of course the copies that actually do sell of the book are going to be the ones at the lower end of the pricing spectrum. One dealer lists a "fine" copy of the book for $1000; another lists the same book in the same shape for $600. Which will you buy? And if someone is selling a "near fine plus" copy for $177 - as is also the case - only very, very rich collectors indeed are going to even consider the higher prices.

So the internet naturally creates  a race to the bottom in pricing. (Some dealers online hold out to sell things at inflated prices, but they very rarely make money that way, given the nature of the game now; if I still had that Odds Against, I'd be putting it online for $150 or less, if I really wanted to sell it). There's more to it than that, too - ways in which the entire idea of being a collector is undermined by the internet.  People who see that there are fifty copies or more of a given book available may well feel skeptical about investing any money in the book at all, if they're hoping to re-sell it at a later date. After all, the value of Odds Against should have gone up in the twenty years between my buying and selling it and my writing this! Prior to the advent of the internet - I remember reading in an introduction to one of those price guides - books were actually a pretty stable investment, with prices for antiquarian books generally only appreciating over time, but nowadays, anyone considering books as an investment should be treading very cautiously. Truly rare items, mind you, remain truly valuable - if anything, prices have gone up, as we have better understanding of just how scarce certain things are (since they never turn up on eBay, say) - but how many books and records out there are truly rare? Even scarce items like the Hartmut Geerken book on Sun Ra, Omniverse - which was only published in a run of about 500 copies, some twenty-five years ago, and for years was nowhere to be found online - have steadily started to make their way internet-ward, as people realize that they can get money for it. Again, some sellers ambitiously insist on charging inflated prices - there are copies at fixed price sites selling for $900-$1500 - but I've seen copies go on actual auction for under $200, when they're allowed to sell that way; it's just a matter of patience and luck, if you truly want the book...  

The thing that I wonder, though - the thing that prompts this writing - actually has nothing to do with e-commerce. If the internet, by making a vast wealth of merchandise previously thought collectible easily available, has led to a general depreciation in values... what about less tangible forms of cultural property: ideas, language, opinions, criticism? Suddenly everyone with an opinion about anything can start a blog, can put their ideas into the world. Some of this is very useful - I'd rather read about horror movies, for example, on fan sites and blogs than from jobbing critics; and obviously I have my own investment in blogging. And certainly there are ways in which people still profit from what gets put online. But surely the plethora of information out there - the sheer availability of text - brings its value down? Why consult experts or newspapers or reference books when there's Google and Wikipedia? (Sure, Wikipedia entries are filled with errors, but guess what? So are books by experts, and they're a lot slower to get revised or updated). Why pay someone to explain something to you that you can learn all you need to know about the topic online? Why buy a cookbook, when there's thousands of recipes to be had for free? Why buy a field guide to birds, say - or a price guide to books - when you can look up any bird or book you encounter on your iPhone? Why buy a dictionary and haul it around, when you have so many gadgets that will do the work for you electronically?
 
For someone with an investment in the idea of doing work in the field of culture - someone who occasionally gets paid for writing and teaching, as well as working in book and record stores - these are personally pressing questions. It's hard to get at the real fear, here, but I have this disturbing apprehension that we have not yet begun to see how much the internet is going to change the face of human culture. Bookstores, DVD and CD retailers and distributors, newspapers and magazines... to the extent these exist in the future, surely they'll be the stuff of nostalgia, of novelty, or else will exist in the service of the poor - for people who don't have access to computers, say. (Already thrift stores are filled with the relics and rubble of another age - VHS tapes, reference books, cassettes - but you still see people buying that stuff, not because they care about its value as an artifact but because they're still living in an analog world, still primarily consume culture that way...). And as for ideas, language, opinions? Soon enough, everything but the truly insightful, truly provocative, truly rare is going to be just more noise - funny animals, celebrity outrages, and blather.

Roky Erickson live in Vancouver!

So this Roky set saw me compose my first ever Setlist.fm submission - and also do my first fan-shot concert video! (The video isn't so hot - we were quite far away - but it's cool to hear these songs again: I grabbed by gal's iPhone and got "Fire Engine" and "Tried to Hide").

Thanks, Erika! 

This Friday: Facefest, featuring a cast of dozens!

(Facefest update: just a few minutes ago, I posted the previous poster for Facefest on my blog - and thought, in passing, that it was weird that the Strugglers weren't playing; almost immediately thereafter, I saw Kristina Mameli's update on Facebook with a new Facefest poster, with the Strugglers on it after all. So all is right in the world - and I've updated the image. Not sure what other changes have been made to the lineup. My original post follows):

Had a happy chat with Aging Youth Gang's Sandy Beach at the Roky Erickson show, but I'm not sure what, if any, of what we said was for print; still, you can catch this excellent Vancouver punk band, partially made up of former Spores, at Facefest this weekend! Here's a live acoustic version of their great song, "Maggots," with Sandy on vocals, recorded at the former Cobalt... Facefest press release follows!

Facefest 2013: Celebrating 18 Years of Ruptured Eardrums

Vancouver, BC-November 22, 2013—Faceplant Productions, in concert the Wise Hall (1882 Adanac Street) and long-time sponsor R&B Brewing, present Facefest 18, an annual fundraiser showcasing an eclectic sampling of Vancouver’s musical talent. Featuring rapid-fire 15-minute sets from over 25 local luminaries, Facefest has become one of the most anticipated festivals of the year. Located in a residential area, the historic Wise Hall has been a cultural, artistic and social venue for over 50 years. Doors are at 7pm, show starts at 8; tickets are $15 at the door.

This year features over 25 acts including Aging Youth Gang, Car 87, Caulk, Chopper and the Saucermen, Eddy D and the Sex Bombs, Gold Stars are for Suckers, Orchard Pinkish and His Horny Hands, Shockload, Spree Killers, The Liquor Kings, The Manglers, The Shit Talkers and more. With bands from almost every conceivable genre, Facefest is perhaps the most diverse musical event of the year.

Since its inception in 1992, Faceplant has been providing rehearsal and recording space for musicians of all genres and talent from the heart of East Vancouver and is one of Vancouver’s longest-running and most unique spaces. Facefest is a celebration of community, as well as an annual opportunity to support, network and raise funds for maintenance of the space.

Facebook event: https://www.facebook.com/events/251308925020820/?fref=ts

 (The Strugglers at Funky's, awhile ago now...)

Claire Denis' Bastards, Destin Cretton's Short Term 12: upcoming Vancity double bill

Spoke to Claire Denis the other week, apropos of the Vancity Theatre's upcoming screening of her new film, a revenge-driven noir called Bastards.  She's an intimidating filmmaker to find oneself on the phone with; I haven't seen all her films, and of the ones I have seen, was utterly stumped by at least one of them (2004's The Intruder, which I caught at the VIFF; it's beautiful to look at, but I have no clue what was going on in the last act! While I'm confessing, I didn't much know what to make of the ending of White Material, either - was totally startled by it, though I thought I had understood the film up to that point...). Even her work with others is the very essence of intimidating: for instance, she's worked on films as esteemed (and varied) as Makavejev's Sweet Movie, Wim Wenders' Paris, Texas and Wings of Desire, and Jim Jarmusch's Down By Law. She also worked with Jacques Rivette, one of various cinema legends whose work I am woefully under-educated on, and even appears briefly in Bresson's Four Nights of a Dreamer (not that I could pick her out)...
 
Still, unworthy though I may be, who could pass up the chance to speak to Claire Denis? I enjoyed Bastards, wanted to give it press, and I am utterly in love with Trouble Every Day, Denis' somewhat neglected "sexual cannibalism" horror film with Vincent Gallo and Beatrice Dalle. It's a dark horse pick: while people like Charles Mudede hold Beau Travail as her best film, I've seen Trouble Every Day five or six times now, find it bottomless and beautiful and haunting and provocative. Apparently the look of the film was informed by the photography of Vancouver's own Jeff Wall!

Anyhow, it wasn't the best interview I've done, but the Straight article (the first link above) hangs together okay. (I also talked briefly to Destin Cretton, whose film Short Term 12 is paired with Denis'; it's a much easier film to take in, though it has its share of emotional intensity...). The fact of the matter is that Bastards actually has a pretty simple story, that people are making too much of its "opacity," or whatnot. Read the Vancity Theatre's description of the plot before you watch it, so you're oriented, if you're at all concerned... I think my favourite moments in the film are actually the opening ones, not of a girl walking naked, as the Vancity description has it, but of a rainy night, and a haunted man looking out at it. By the time you learn who he is and the significance of the shot, you won't remember the image, which is why I think Denis' films actually need to be seen more than once to be appreciated... but, well, she disagrees, so...

Roky Erickson in Vancouver: setlist, plus quick review of a show you probably were at anyhow

Photo by Erika Lax

What a terrific night! Thanks to La-Ti-Da Records for bringing Roky Erickson to town - a bucket list concert if ever there was one. It was a lengthy, varied set, longer than most recent Roky shows on Setlist FM - feel free to correct me if I've missed anything:

Night of the Vampire - epic, dramatic intro to the night, with crowd whooping as Roky was led onstage (by his son?)

Cold Night For Alligators

Bermuda

White Faces

John Lawman (Roky appears to have altered the lyrics - it didn't SOUND like he was singing about killing people all day long - & the band got a bit out of synch on this one at the end!)

Goodbye Sweet Dreams

Roller Coaster (thanks to Adrian Mack for educating me on this one - his show review here)

Fire Engine

Tried To Hide

Levitation (my girl, bless her, checked to see if Roky was singing "I've got limitations" on this one... nope, that's not the lyric to that! Incidentally, for the longest time I used to make up my own lyric to "Two Headed Dog," back when I didn't know it too well: instead of the Kremlin line - which I either couldn't make out or didn't understand, or a bit of both - when singing the song to myself, I would improvise, "it doesn't work if you whistle with a two-headed dog." Trying to impose logic on the lyrics of Roky Erickson can only lead to failure).

Splash 1 ("home to stay")

Reverberation 

Stand for the Fire Demon

The Wind and More (with what sounded like passages of extemporaneous lyrics from Roky, like he was just free-associating. I can't be sure, though. My favourite tune of the night!)

Bloody Hammer (people got moshing up front!)

Encore:
Two Headed Dog (briefly someone got up-ended in the pit and crowd surfed, which I was not expecting at a Roky Erickson concert!)

You're Gonna Miss Me (minus the electric jug, but if that was indeed Roky's son, he joined the band to provide a few background vocals along the jug-lines)

Roky's band provided able support throughout - singing some of the lyrics that Roky dropped and providing a deep, rich, sometimes eerie background texture, both vocal and musical; a couple of raised hand gestures aside, Roky himself stuck to playing and singing, with song intros and thank yous coming from either the guitarist or bassist, wasn't sure which... but he was in great voice (and even when his voice breaks - unlike, say, Ozzy Osbourne - he still sounds fantastic). 

Openers Dead Ghosts teased the audience with a lick from the Cramps' "Primitive" as they were soundchecking, but then they didn't play the song, which prompted me to wonder throughout the night why bands don't play more covers nowadays; especially when you're crafting music that's consciously retro and genre-referencing, as Dead Ghosts do - they play a Nuggetsy psych-garage-pop - why not throw in a familiar tune by another artist now and then? (People with a fondness for the art of the cover should note that Tim Chan's band China Syndrome will be doing three sets of music, including MANY 80's covers, at the Ukrainian Hall as part of a school benefit this Saturday; I bet the upcoming Enigmas reunion January 11th will have a few covers, too).

Incidentally, Dead Ghosts prompted the best shout from the peanut gallery that I heard, again during the soundcheck; one of the members asked for reverb in his mike, and after a few minutes of soundchecking, someone seated behind me shouted, "More reverb, I can still understand you!"

The next band up, the Ballantynes, were easily the second best band of the night (I can't put them above Roky), playing a really tight, rich, guitar-driven Motown/ R&B, with two drummers, two guitars, three members who sang, a bassist and an organ. They're one of the best bands playin' this sort of music that I've seen since I caught Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings; the tattooed, sexy main singer commented with total sincerity and joy when we ran into her by the ladies' room after the show that she had been on the edge of tears the whole night, so moved was she to have played before Roky Erickson... This is a great, great band!

Seattle's King Dude had an interesting guitar sound - Johnny Cash, Nick Cave, and the Gun Club came to mind, and there were all sorts of tense, dramatic musical passages that more than earned the band the description of "apocalyptic folk" - but they have a singer who does not seem to have found his voice yet - quite literally: he switched from a slightly whiny, under-differentiated "standard male vocal" to a deep, at times ironic-seeming growl to, at one point, what sounded weirdly like he had an Australian accent! Guy kinda needs to pick a voice and stick to it. (Plus the inclusion of a few moody slow acoustic numbers was probably inviting impatience from an audience ready to Rok). I suspect I would enjoy King Dude more if they were not the third opening act before a band I was really excited to see...

Red Herring: a fantastic, intimate show that YOU probably missed!

At one point towards the end of the second Red Herring set at the Prophouse last night, frontman Enrico Renz quipped something to the audience - a packed crowd of maybe 30 people, among them local musicians Ford Pier, Elizabeth Fischer, and Judith Scott - to the effect of, "if you think you're surprised... so are we!" That came after an amazingly tight, fun, high-energy rendition of their song "Love Machine," but well before the band knocked it out of the house with the three song closer - "Taste Tests," "Neon," and "Rocketship," the latter two unknown to me. (A final poem about Trout Lake park by Renz didn't really command the attention of the last few songs; ending on a bang would probably have been wiser, though Renz is an engaging poet - he'd done a previous piece earlier in the night that began with a fish in an aquarium becoming self-aware, which had him imitating gills and fish-facedness as he performed). The first half of the night, despite very recognizable versions of "Maturity" (which opened the show, Renz reading the lyrics from the back of the band's sole EP) and "If You Work For Me," had been dominated by more recent compositions from Renz, as well as new songs by bassist Martin Walton and guitarist Stephen Nikleva, both of whom took the mike to sing. The  newer tunes sprawled across the musical map, taking in Louisiana swamp blues, country music, and even Macedonian polka - which makes more sense when you understand that Nikleva jams every Thursday at the Chai Lounge (East Is East) on Main Street with Roma violinist Lache Cercel, exploring his own partially Eastern European heritage. But the final few songs of the night were very much a return to vintage Red Herring - a spiky, jangly, danceable art-punk that bears some similarity to early Talking Heads, but is mostly quirky and iconoclastic and unique. It was clear that the band didn't expect to return so effortlessly to their original sound - Nikleva had told me on the phone previously that he expected the songs wouldn't sound much the same - but if anything, they sounded better than on record, for the energetic live delivery: they were liberated, exploratory, highly playful - but mostly smokin' hot. There is life in Red Herring yet, it turns out. If Vancouver is lucky, they will do this again very soon...