Sunday, October 01, 2006

Volcano Suns Reunite! Waah!



I had no idea these guys were back together! One of the most memorable gigs of my gig-watchin' life was seeing the Volcano Suns at the Cruel Elephant in, I guess, the late '80's. This was the GRANVILLE Elephant incarnation, right toward the end of its tenure as a punk venue; the place was fuckin' FALLING APART. It was raining heavily, and the ceiling was leaking EVERYWHERE, with great clumps of soggy insulation plummeting down onto the stage and industrial-sized white buckets set up in various places to catch the various torrential streams of leakage dribbling down. The overhead lights were fried and steam was coming off the floor lights -- within a very short period of time, the venue would be shut down for good. The band somehow managed to play in these conditions, shirtless and humid and sweaty and soaked with rain -- it was like seeing a concert in a cave; somehow no one got electrocuted. I remember they did stuff off All Night Lotus Party, and maybe a couple of songs off Bumper Crop -- and here's devoutly hoping for a CD reissue of those two fine slabs of musical meat, by the way (the above pictured disc, Career in Rock, can still be found on eBay and is actually a killer recording, of interest to any Mission of Burma fans out there, tho' it's quite a bit heavier and more primitive than MoB). Years later, as a souvenir of this memorable past gig, I got a vintage Volcano Suns t-shirt off eBay, but it doesn't, um, actually fit me, so...

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