Chest Fever is Back: The Official Revival of the Band, Tonight at the Rickshaw - outtakes and sidenotes

Levon Helm and Garth Hudson of the Band, July 18, 1983 Q E Theatre, by bev davies

Remember the days of Pay TV? Back in the days when you had the proverbial "13 channels of shit on the TV to choose from", in the mid-1980s, there were two Canadian channels, First Choice and Superchannel, that you could subscribe to that played mostly movies, which they would repeat multiple times during the day. I believe this was actually before VHS tapes caught on, certainly before we had much in the way of rental stores. If you saw a movie that you liked, you could go through TV Guide and make a note of what other screenings were on and see it again and again and watch that movie as many times as you liked, while it was in rotation. 

That was my introduction to the Band. There was a video -- I believe this one, The Band is Back --  of the Band in concert, at the very 1983 show that Bev photographed, at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre. I watched that at least three times and still vividly remember bits of it, like Levon kind of taunting the audience with his refusals to play "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" (which is very much a part of The Last Waltz, made only seven years previous). Neither of the stories out there about his refusal to play the song touch on the politics of nostalgia for the pre-Civil War south, by the way (which is more of a contemporary concern). They usually either revolve around either Helm's dissatisfaction with the publishing royalties (Robbie Robertson, absent that 1983 tour, allegedly claimed more than his due, or was at least subject to complaints along those lines from Helm). It might also have been down (according to Garth Hudson, at least) Helm's dislike for the Joan Baez cover version (which apparently was a massive hit; I'm amused to report that to my knowledge, I've never heard it, was unaware she did the song). 

You can dive down a Levon Helm vs. Robbie Robertson rabbithole starting here, if you haven't been down that road before. I'm pretty sure that Helm would have appreciated that because of my point of entry into the Band's catalogue, I had no idea who Robbie Robertson was for years: the version of the Band I grew up with was very much the 1983 Pay-TV one! 

So how did Dude Cervantes get into the Band? "I remember my Dad showing me early on, over Thanksgiving, something to watch, and then in my early 20s there was a band in L.A. I was pursuing to be a part of. " (This was the band Biirdie, Dude explains later. "And I was having a hard time trying to play, stylistically, what they needed, and the bass player said, 'If you could just play like Robbie Robertson, you'll get this gig, and I was like, 'Who's Robbie Robertson?' He's like, 'Dude, you've gotta watch this,' and then he pulled up 'Up on Cripple Creek'. And I was like, 'Oh, I get it, okay.' And that was it, I started diving into the band, and the rest is history. It started out of necessity, really: 'I've gotta be able to play like this guitarist if I'm going to get this gig.' And then I fell in love with the music."

Dude Cervantes' project Chest Fever, the Official Revival of the Band, plays tonight at the Rickshaw (assuming they aren't stranded in Cumberland due to windstorms!) with, of course, a star-studded lineup of guests. Cervantes last toured through Vancouver in March of this very year, albeit with a different unit. Actually, there were two of them: Blues for Greeny, a tribute act to the music of Peter Green and early Fleetwood Mac, who headlined a show at the Rickshaw (and whom I shot a clip of out in White Rock); and Dude Cervantes and the Panchos (the same musicians under a different name), who played their own original songs at smaller venues like LanaLou's. I wrote about those shows here. 

Chest Fever/ Mrs Henry

As sort of gets explained in the current Straight piece about Chest Fever, just as Blues for Greeny is Dude Cervantes & the Panchos by another name, Chest Fever is an alter-ego of another project of Cervantes, Mrs. Henry, who do their own originals, including a full-blown 3LP rock opera, Keep On Rising. They also have whole albums of cover songs by the Band, though only one of them seems to be on their Bandcamp at the moment (and of course they are in fact are named for a song Bob Dylan wrote with the Band during The Bassement Tapes sessions). 

Actually a few other details get omitted from the Straight piece. The core members of Chest Fever, for example: while Cervantes takes most of the Levon Helm songs, the drummer TJ Rogers, from Niagra, Ontario, sings a lot of the Rick Danko tunes; Jody Bagley, the keyboardist, does the Richard Manuel songs ("and one of the Rick Danko tunes too", Cervantes notes). Kris Rodgers is the band's Garth, and Stu Mahan plays the bass. 

Another outtake involves how Mrs. Henry morphed into Chest Fever (I think of Mrs. Henry sort of like Clark Kent to Chest Fever's Superman). The full quote: "There's a company called Iconoclast that was started in 2021, at the onset of the publishing buys that were happening. And this group, Iconoclast, was started with Robbie as a part of it, to my knowledge, to some extent. And the Band's catalogue was one of the first catalogues for them to own. And members of that organization, who essentially handled the Band's estate, they came to our show in May of 2022." (This was Mrs. Henry's first show back after COVID). "And they said, 'We love what you're doing and we want to get behind it somehow; we don't know how, but we think it would be great if you created a tribute to the Band.' And so we did! We started Chest Fever and we went for it." 

One tip: there is no opening act, and I would suggest that people arrive close to the 7pm door time, since things will likely kick off on the early side, as time is a consideration. "It should be around three hours and change; Mo and David definitely don't want me to push it, as last year it was close to four hours, and they're like, 'Can you please not make it four hours, this show?' No promises, but I've been asked, and I'm going to do my best!" 

One last outtake is actually the full version of the Nicholas Ruiz photo that we had to crop to fit the Straight piece. Pretty cool shot! See you tonight at the Rickshaw. 

Chest Fever by Nicholas Ruiz

Event details here.

Circle C (Copyright debut under a different name) now on vinyl! Pre-orders via Porterhouse!

 

Pre-orders here, only 500 copies being pressed! If you don't know this album, start here. 

Vinyl wish list revised

I am removing the Alice Donut -- I have a couple and can abide. I acquired Flamejob. I would add the Birthday Party's Junkyard but I think I have a line on it. 

John Cooper Clarke: Disguise in Love

The Soft Boys: A Can of Bees

Yello: Solid Pleasure

Volcano Suns: Career in Rock

Articles of Faith: Give Thanks

Victims Family: The Germ 

NO FUN: Snivel (on vinyl - if it ever comes out!)

Sonic Youth: Sister, but only with the original uncensored cover

The Dictators: Bloodbrothers

Neil Young: Psychedelic Pill, Chrome Dreams II, Broken Arrow

  

The Devils' restoration error: a complaint about continuity

While I am very glad for the enthusiasm accompanying its long overdue restoration, truth is, The Devils is becoming one of those frustrating films for me, because (as with Blade Runner and Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid) I have now, in the name of keeping up, felt obliged to watch multiple versions of it, more times then I necessarily would have chosen to, en route to the "final" cut; I have seen at least five different edits of the film, over the years, which is at least three more than I really ever needed to see (especially given that I've seen some of those cuts two or three times in themselves). I have seen more directors' cuts replaced with "final" cuts than I have ever needed to, in general, and do not need this to be another such film. 

Because it's actually not my favourite Ken Russell film! (Women in Love would be that, with The Devils placing third after Altered States). While I enjoy the spectacle, the craft, and the audacity of the film, the truth is that I do not find, maybe because it's so chaotic, that it is an easy film to emotionally or even thematically engage with. It's a film you WATCH, more than you feel (or think), a film that is so caught up in its excesses and its relentless spectacle that you lose sight of various ironies and nuances: like that Grandier is perfectly comfortable when he's at his most debauched, early in the film, and that his sufferings only really begin when he tries to redeem himself (if he'd just stayed debauched, all would have been fine!). Redemption and suffering go hand in hand, at least in the world of the film, but you're so overwhelmed by the orgying vomiting naked nuns that you don't necessarily take the film's themes in, at least not as deeply as you might want to. (I know there are admirers of the Huxley book who do not admire the Russell film, and presumably this is partially why). 

Still, I was prepared, to give the film one big final theatrical screening, to see it properly restored. I anticipated feeling some relief, in fact: finally, there would be closure, a chance to just stop seeing the film every few years, to let the film, now restored to its proper state, go off into the world without further support or commentary, like, say, Clearcut or such: There, it's out! Our work (the work of the film's advocates and afficionados) is done, the cut is the cut, it's final, it's done, we're not going to CGI out the guns or upgrade the special effects or fix the greens (Sorcerer) or decide, "Wait, no, we made a mistake"-it. It's like a band on a farewell tour that never ends.

That relief is not forthcoming. The team behind the restoration mess it up in one key scene -- one of the two major restored segments, the so-called "R@pe of Christ". In the best of the two bootleg versions of the film that I have seen -- a blu ray that came out a few years ago with Spanish subtitles and all the missing material restored, and at the proper aspect ratio, unlike the DVD bootleg of even further back -- the R@pe of Christ plays out with only a couple of interruptions. There is a brief cut to the start of the "orgy"; we cut to a scene where Grandier -- Oliver Reed -- consecrates some bread in a private ritual. We go back to the nuns and the arrival of the King in disguise, preparing to play a prank with his alleged vial of Christ's blood. Around the time he breaks that out, there is a brief cut of Grandier pouring wine into a chalice, also for mass (the "real" blood of Christ as opposed to the King's empty case). But mostly, besides that one shot of the wine, we stay on the nun-stuff, which plays out in a long flowing sequence that (because it is not interrupted) builds to a pretty intense fever-pitch. It is bookended by Grandier, and has one brief cutaway to the chalice, and that's it. That's how, I believe, the film played in 2002, when Ken Russell was still alive and supervising the edit, which was also then described as a director's cut; because the two subsequently bootlegged versions of that film (presumably based on that cut), I believe both follow that exact trajectory (I haven't double-checked the DVD but I suspect my memory serves; I did check the even better Spanish blu). 

That is not what we are seeing in theatres now. For some reason, the people behind this new edit decide to cut away more often. It reads like the Peckinpets edit of Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, which omits the "what you want and what you get" line: an infuriating bit of self-licensing to do what one will with a film in the name of the "director". It isn't the first such instance (the censoring of the breasts from Love Streams has also been defended by Criterion as representing the filmmaker's true will). No doubt they will say that Ken Russell wanted more cutaways. But if those excessive, choppy cuts, seemingly done to hammer home the parallels between virtue (Grandier's simple mass) and vice (the chicanery in the church), were what Russell "really" wanted, he surely would have shot material to cut away to. The team behind this restoration seems so intent on punctuating the orgy with shots of Oliver Reed they actually REPEAT the consecration and the breaking of bread. Exact shot, twice -- a sloppiness Russell would not have abided and which I don't believe IS in the cut of the film that originally screened some 24 years ago.  It is distracting, unnecessary, and amateurish-looking, a sloppy little continuity error apparently edited INTO the film for this restoration, if I've watched closely enough, and which lessens the impact and flow of the orgy. We already know that a contrast is being established between his faithful ritual and the debauchery, thanks. We do not need to zip back and forth: the class was paying attention, so there is no need for teacher to read that sentence twice.  

And I mean, you ALSO have an orgying horde of naked vomiting nuns you are distracting us all from. People who have seen this film dozens of times over the years (as have I) but who were not lucky enough to see the "previous" director's cut in some form or other have come to see the film FOR the naked orgying vomiting nuns. And the charred thighbone masturbation (note: if you haven't seen THAT scene, it is much tenderer than it sounds). 

Addendum: there are suggestions over on the Criterion Forum, where the bread-breaking is mentioned, that the repetition of shots happens because Russell and Bradsell had to hurriedly splice material into an existing cut of the film, and elected to live with continuity errors, rather than rebuilding the whole scene; there seems also an implication (or so the AI seemed to indicate) that these errors are repeated in "homage" to the earlier film (this seems like a potential computer misparaphrase) Forgive me for not double-checking the 2002 (bootleg) DVD version as well, but I assure you, the whole R@pe of Christ plays out without these repeated shots on said Spanish blu ray; it has none of the clunkiness in those scenes, is perfectly edited, and is what you really kinda should have used. 

We can only hope that these errors are addressed before any physical media release! 

(...and by the way, the French DVD of Love Streams includes the nudity. There may be some inherent hypocrisy in what I've written here but whatever, the repeated shots are clumsy and shouldn't be in there, whoever's will they allegedly manifest or whichever circumstances they duplicate or...).  

#nobody-cares_but_the_writer

See this film if you haven't, it's magnificent and this is one really SMALL but ANNOYED quibble, but, like, I am ready for the final cut here. The restoration looks great otherwise, sorry, guys. (But c'mon, get it right). 

Alexa Bardach Celebration of Life: Notes from Lana Ryma and Nadja Feutlinske

Alexa Bardach with Tony in the background, October 29, 2010, by bev davies. 

Tony Bardach: "The nun ones are cool, eh?"

NOTE: MATERIAL HAS BEEN ADDED to this since initial publication

Alexa Bardach had stunning charisma.

The best case-in-point I can offer: At the 2011 Rock'n'Relief Benefit for Japan, I saw, in the course of the evening, performances by the Pointed Sticks, SNFU, the Jolts, White Lung, and the Trespassers--all heavy-hitters in Vancouver punk, some with front people that have legendary status. But the single detail of the night that is not now a vague blur, over 15 years later, is Alexa Bardach taking the stage with Billy Bonito (AKA Billy Hopeless of the Black Halos) for the Bonitos' cover of the Stooges' "TV Eye". 

For the first half of the song, from a half-crouch over her mic stand, Bardach just locked eyes with Bonito as the band vamped, shifting like a predatory feline contemplating the best angle from which to pounce: it was electric and compelling and generated a fair bit of suspense around the question of, "Is she ever going to sing?"

By the time she did, just with the sheer intensity of her stage presence, she had already upstaged every other performer in the room. The story goes that Mr. Chi Pig had an inflatable alligator onstage with him that night. I was there, and you'd figure that would be memorable, but no.

I only ever saw Alexa Bardach on a few other occasions: at a Neptoon instore for PIGGY (I believe she predated Ange as the lead singer?), where we chatted a bit, and once at the East Vamps Lucky Bar show mentioned below. I liked her a lot, based on short exposure! 

Alexa Bardach, May 12, 2011 at Rock'n' Relief: Tony reports that Suicide was a "real fav" band of Alexa's, and that she met Martin Rev in Vancouver!

Nadja Feutlinske knew her better. She won't be at the Celebration of Life this coming Sunday, November 1st, at LanaLou's, since she's in Iceland (!), but odds are, you've seen her drumming in at least one band or another, as she's played in the Living Deadbeats, the Shit Talkers, the Wett Stilettos, the C U Next Tuesdays and several others (including "hot minute appearances" with Death Sentence and the Bombshells). But the East Vamps were her first band, which she joined at age 17 at the invite of frontperson Gerry-Jenn Wilson. 

Nadja recalls their first show, at the El Dorado: "I was underage so I had to wait outside until we played. After we played, Pete Feend came up to me and asked me to to try out for the Living Deadbeats and from there I kept joining new bands!"

Alexa was brought on board later, and was "the perfect addition" to the East Vamps, Feutlinske recalls. "She brought something special with her, not just musically, but as a person. Somewhere along the way, she took me under her wing and made me feel like her sister. That meant more to me than she probably ever knew."

Once Alexa joined the group, they began practicing at the space co-run by her father, Tony Bardach, and fellow Pointed Stick Gord Nicholl, the Dental Lab. "For me, some of my favourite memories happened after practice. Practice would be over, but I would stay with Alexa until the wee hours of the morning, writing songs and messing around with sounds. We were never quite ready to call it a night. She had this MIDI pad beat maker that I would fuck around on, and she had all these fun guitar pedals that we could experiment with. We would get lost in making music together, creating all this dark, gothy synth stuff. Those late nights were something special. Alexa wasn't just someone I played in a band with. She was someone I looked up to, someone I learned from, someone who made me feel included."

3/4s of the East Vamps: Nadja, Lisa Lloyd, Alexa

Tony Bardach has shared some of Alexa's unreleased electronica with me and it's compelling, atmospheric and quirky. We hope it finds its way online! Note that Tony will be present at the celebration, note, but I haven't pressed him with questions, other than checking a few facts. It's a tough time; Alexa was his only child. 

We're happy to run Alexa's bandmate's story instead. To Feutlinske's memory, the band only ever went on a single tour, up island, commencing with a show your present author happened to be at, on June 25th, 2011: "We kicked things off at the Lucky Bar in Victoria, where they also had a video showing of Bloodied but Unbowed. From there, we were off to Cumberland. The next morning, we went exploring around the old Chinatown area, where Chinese immigrants had settled while working on the railroad. We stumbled across this HUUUUGE field of poppies, and it was absolutely beautiful. We wandered deeper into the trails and started finding old artifacts scattered around, things like old food cans and keys."

(For those unaware of Cumberland's Chinatown, I am presuming that this is the same area that Nadja is referring to; I have not been, myself. Feutlinske did provide a photo from the poppy fields; Alexa isn't in it, but maybe she took it? These poppy fields are not otherwise known, it seems: if you search "poppy fields Cumberland" there's nothing. I have a fair guess what Chinese workers were doing with all those poppies!).

 

Nadja, Lisa, Gerry-Jenn

The tour continued to Tofino, Nadjia contiues. "We spent time at the beaches, feeling the ocean mist and getting soaked by the rain. The Tofino show was another fun one. The crowd was rowdy, loud, and full of energy. The venue even provided us all with our own hotel room for the night but I ended up spending my night in Alexa's room, and we chatted away for hours. I also vividly remember all of us — me, Lisa, Gerry, Jenn, and Alexa — hanging out of our hotel windows, yelling down at unsuspecting passersby and innocently making fun of them. Thankfully, they were good sports and yelled right back up at us! It's such a ridiculous, silly memory, but it makes me smile. I can picture us all up there, laughing our asses off, being a bunch of idiots."

The East Vamps (Nadja, Gerry-Jenn, Lisa, Alexa) at the Princeton

Feutlinske and Bardach drifted further apart after the East Vamps folded. (Google AI says the band's final show was on June 9, 2017, at the SBC Cabaret). "But one thing about Alexa was that she never completely lost touch. She would reach out by text or call to check on me and make sure I was doing okay. She was always interested in what bands I was playing in, what I was creating, and whatever adventures I was getting myself into."

Every once in a while, I'd see her at her dad Tony's place when I was there to take Cane for walks. Cane was Ryan's dog, Ryan being Alexa's long-term partner. Cane was the most muscular, massive pit bull you ever did see. An absolute tank of a dog, the sweetest boy."

Nadja ends the email interview with "RIP ALEXA. I think the world of you!"

Though Nadja can't make it to the Celebration of Life on Sunday, one of her bandmates in the East Vamps, Lisa Lloyd, will be playing in the Get Arounds, also involving Lana Ryma, the Lana of LanaLou's. Lana plays in the three bands at present, drumming in the Furniture and Ten Days Late, both of which go back awhile (Ten Days Late began in 1990!); but she's very much the front person for the Get Arounds, as you will soon see in the new video for the song "Kill or Be Killed", which is a short while away from its official debut (that is a private link, which I hope works!); note that the band will be headlining their own songs on November 14th at a subsequent LanaLou's show. 

"The Get Arounds started during the pandemic", she explains.  "I was at home, my business LanaLou's was temporarily closed. Carman had some songs and no one else was around to sing some back ups so I gave it a try and wow! I was hooked. And now we just released our latest album Going Out Tonight and we have a third album in the works." 

The Get Arounds. Back: Carman Lethbridge; front, Sean Stubbs, Lana Ryma, Kimi Mah, Lisa Lloyd. Photo by David Jacklin

Going Out Tonight has Jay Solyom of the Spitfires and La Chinga on drums, for most tracks (though Lana drums on "Kill or Be Killed" and "Do or Die"). Carman does most else. But live, the band will be Lana, Carman, Kimi Mah on guitar, Lisa Lloyd on bass, and Sean Stubbs on drums. They'll be performing songs from the Victorian Pork CD of 2001, which has Alexa front-and-center as bandleader.

We should clarify here that Victorian Pork was originally the name of a hallowed fuck band from the original Vancouver scene. According to Gerry Hannah, in this clip, the initial lineup was himself, Brad Kent, Chuck Biscuits and Dave Noga. Contemplate this vintage gig poster, where D.O.A. is the last band on the bill! 

That was in 1977, but there were many lineups of the band over the years. One, photographed by Bev, has Zippy Pinhead on drums, Randy Rampage guesting on vocals, and Brad Kent on guitar. Kent played guitar for D.O.A. and the Avengers, and the Sick Ones, among other bands, passed in 2016. And some of the songs findable online, recorded circa 2000, also include Brad Kent on guitar, though he is missing from the band's actual CD.

Victorian Pork with guest Randy Rampage, by bev davies, not to be reused without permission, taken at an unspecified hotel on an unspecified date at a "hotel across from the Railway Club"

We didn't want to pester Alexa's father Tony too much, in the run up to the Celebration of Life, as it's obviously a difficult time for him, but we did have to ask: What happened to Brad Kent? His tenure with Victorian Pork dated back to the 1970s Vancouver scene, even pre-dating Tony; so why did he suddenly disappear from the band's roster? Tony got back to us by email, saying, "He quit one night at the Cobalt when the opening band wouldn't lend him their amp!

Tony Bardach tells me that he and Nicholl are working on remixes of the recordings with Alexa and Brad Kent. "It will be played loud on Sunday; you will dig I'm sure!" He is also playing to play the Victorian Pork version of Trooper's "Two for the Show" (which he tells me is apparently Ra Maguire's favourite song on the Shot Spots punk rock tribute album to Trooper).

The Victorian Pork CD, which came out on "Porcine Records", had father-and-daughteer Bardachs and Randy Bowman on drums, along with contributions by names that I do not know. Who is "Elbore James", the harmonica player on "Buzzcocks"? (Tony sez he was Buddy from Vancouver retro rockabilly scene, but not Buddy Selfish, I guess; Buddy Knox?). Is the "stunt guitar" player credited as "Budge Schacte" actually Van Django's Budge Schachte, just spelled wrong? (Tony says yep!). Ian Tiles provides "voiceover on 'Nite Cafe'", and we all recognize that name, but, hell, even Alex, Tony, and Randy have pseudonyms in the booklet (Alexa is lx, Tony is "tony eleven"--all lowercased-- and Randy Bowman is "five-o-man". Brad Kent is not mentioned).

The songs are indeed snotty and raw and old-school, and a few of them are actually online, posted as individual tracks on the Dental Lab website, though some are (apparently) non-CD tracks involving Brad Kent on guitar: "Just Wanna Beer", the D.O.A. staple "I Don't Give a Shit"and "I Wanna Be Free" (where Brad goes full-on, reminding one a bit of Benny Doro on the Rampage solo LP). Others I think are from the actual CD, Bad: "Pretty Girls", "Mike Stole My Smoke", and "Bad". Tony tells me there are other songs demo'd with Kent, and shared me a "BK" version of "Buzzcocks", for example, about when Alexa snuck into a Buzzcocks show. The words are not always easy to discern, but Tony explains, "Gord Nicholl has a computer program that can isolate tracks so I have used that to capture some tough lyrics":

Buzzcocks - Alexa Bardach

Snuck into the Buzzcocks in ninety-nine
Staff stood waiting- so divine
Picked on the punks for what they stood for
Meanwhile going against all they stood for
Caught and threatened violent Anna
Power-tripped and they cussed and tossed her
Collared her without a cause
What is justice if means nothing at all
Oh you pretty thing
You’re such a silly thing
You’re no help to our economy
You’re only here to screw all of us
Where were you I needed you all
I heard your laughter while I kicked and screamed
Stood in a circle with your fists in your drawers
Inhaling donuts with no decency
Snuck into the Buzzcocks in ninety-nine
Staff stood waiting- so divine
Picked on the punks for what they stood for
Meanwhile going against all they stood for
Well I’m just outside here
Standing outside the Starfish Room and they’re playing my favourite song
The Buzzcocks are going to at it and Pete Shelley’s howling
And I’m just trying to find my Clash pin that fell out in the mosh pit
Its lying out in the street somewhere but I can’t find it and the cop grabs me
and he throws me against his wagon and he says
You’re trying to steal my fucking car
Im not trying to steal your car I just want my badge
And he puts me in shackles
and I look at him and I laugh at him
Bastard

Maybe you'll hear that (with the Brad Kent solo) later today. 

There's much more that will happen at the Celebration of Life -- including contributions from "everyone's right hand man", Orchard Pinkish, leading a banf with Randy Bowman. There will also be a set by the Be Good Tanya's Sam Parton. There may be some surprises in store, too! It's definitely a be-there night. 

Never got to know you well, Alexa, but you made an impression, the few times our paths crossed. You'll be greatly missed. 

See you all Sunday! (Note: this is a supplement to a piece I'm doing for the Georgia Straight, so there are some unused quotes and other deets, now findable here). 

1st Annual BC Bat Benefit gig report with photos by Bob Hanham!

Iggy, M, and myself, doing it for the bats, by Bob Hanham (all photos by Bob Hanham, not to be reused without permission)

So that was a very successful show! We had a nice full-ish audience with lots of familiar faces (and a few unfamiliar ones), got on the news, had a fun group shot taken by Toni-Moore Ruck (though Erika is hidden behind Nick), paid back my advertising expenses and Nick's ferry fare, and raised $430 for the Community Bat Programs of BC. (I hope some of the bat facts presented in the video by Brynne Graham in the vid as well were of interest, as well; I also learned a bunch about bats from doing this). Cake was there for Adam Kates and Nick Venditti  (Hüskee Düde). Everyone was very entertaining (and I do hope entertained) and though I was half-lost in just keeping things organized ("can we get plates for the cake?") and saying hellos to people, the high points were very high. These included:  

Rowan Lipkovits' cover of Tom Lehrer's "An Irish Ballad" (which I didn't film, but here's the original; I did shoot a clip of Rowan doing Al Mader's "Dead Man's Pants", which I am glad of, because Al was at the bookstore Rowan mentions, doing his shift, so he couldn't be there). Rowan's Youtube channel is here and filled with delights; I love what he does, wish we'd see him do it more often! He also did two bat-centric Sesame Street songs, a small bit of the first of which is perfectly placed at the end of that news clip (can we get a "batty batty batty"?). 

By the way, was the context for "Alabama Song" actually the rise of Nazism? Did I misunderstand that? I thought it was just a kinda downbeat drinkin' song! 

We played Brynne's vid at that point -- see my interview with her here -- then Sister DJ and the Hired Hand (whose names are Jill and Quentin) took the stage for a brief but charming set, mostly of originals, including one actually about bats). I didn't like the one vid I shot, of their one-non original, and wish I had had my phone up for "Vegan Vampire", which was brilliant and hilarious (and is not on their bandcamp yet, alas). Apparently she is, in fact, a vegan, so I was very glad to have a vegan cake on hand, at request of  my buddy Adam (whose request that I organize some sort of birthday thing for him was in fact crucial to motivating me to get the whole show happening). I doubt many people in the audience had seen Sister DJ before but she's a true enthusiast and should get more appreciation! She would also later join NO FUN  onstage to add some wickedly enthusiastic harmonica to "Work Drink Bat Die", also with Dave Dedrick of the Sneaky Dragon Podcast). 

Nick just being there was, I think, a special motivator for people to come out -- he was the person whose set times I was most asked about. He's had some issues that kept him off the stage for a long while, but he was in fine form, doing a four or five Dü tunes and a couple of originals, including one I shot, called "What Happened". It was meaningful to me that Erika got to see that set, because she's only seen Nick in other contexts (like ranting cynically at me about the incipient destruction of the world by an asteroid when we ran into him at a Coquitlam bus stop! He can get intense at such times), had never heard him play before (unless seeing him in Little Guitar Army counts; I don't think it does, as he was sorely under-used in that band).

Birthday boys Nick and Adam!

 High points of Nick's set were seeing Adam, seated on the far side of the stage, mouthing the lyrics along with Nick to "Never Talking to You Again" (which I was also doing from where I was seated) and Nick's brother (Chris I believe) joining him, in lieu of an absent Brock Pytel (who had other commitments) to do a stellar cover of "Ice Cold Ice". (Didn't shoot that but I shot this when Brock did do this with Nick). I wasn't taking notes but he also did a "Makes No Sense at All" and at one point during that song, audience member Tony Lee leaned over an unused kit and gave a perfectly-timed drumroll, just hands on a floor tom, I think it was, where Grant Hart would have done it, which I think startled Nick a bit but was real fun. Tony also wisely took the mic to get everyone to sing the embarrassing birthday song (which I hadn't planned on doing, but I'm glad it was done, especially since I didn't have to; thanks for doing the heavy lifting, Tony!). 

By the by, Nick will be part of this show, if you're on the island this weekend! 

And speaking of people who I hadn't seen play in awhile, there was NO FUN. Of course, it is fun to get  up onstage to "eep" and flap bats with David M. and Iggy (real name Haskell), but as with Nick, the fact of him performing to a fullish house, which we hadn't seen him do for awhile, was the real thrill of his set; I don't think I'd heard a few of these songs since the last time David played one of my events! "Work Drink Bat Die", with Sister DJ on harmonica, was real fun, with the hand gestures now corresponding to "eeps" (though I sat that one out; I didn't realize there were eeps in it!). (The original of "Work Drink Fuck Die", if anyone doesn't know it, is on this album, the cover artist of which was also present over in the merch corner, with some ARGH!! boxes and more). I also really enjoyed Danielle M.'s vocal on "Manic Monday" and shot video of the two closing songs, "Fall Like Us" (adapting "Be Like Us," which also appears on that album) and (I hope I've got this right) "The Ship Called the Anna Maria", a sea shanty complete with a singalong scroll prepared years ago by the late, great Paul Leahy. We're working on a NO FUN at Christmas event, which may indeed involve the Good King Wenceslas show. More deets to come! 

For thems what keep records, the complete NO FUN setlist was, David reports, "Doubt In The Mind Of Royalty/If I Was A Bat (with Allan MacInnis and Iggy)/ If I Was A Bat Mash (with Allan and Iggy)/ Work Drink Bat Die (with Jill Mandrake and David Dedrick)/ COVID-19/ Close The Drapes/ Fear Is A Man's Best Friend/ In Fall/ Build On Your Dreams In Fall/ Autumn Almanac/ The Laughing Gnome/ Your Music Is Garbage/ Manic Monday (with Danielle Matychuk)/ Fall Like Us (with Fall In Love Again) (with Dave)/ The Ship Called The Anna Maria That Appears From Time To Time (with Michael McAree and Dave)."

Thanks to people who came out, people who performed, and (behind the scenes) to the Community Bat Programs of BC, CityNews (and whoever their unnamed bat expert was!). Also thanks to anyone who donated who was not there, to ARGH!! for coming out with some seasonally appropriate art, to Angela Bower for the fun and informative news report, to LanaLou's staff and to Lana herself, and to Alex Varty for helping me shorten-down my novel-length press release (!). And to Bob for the photos! We have already begun (sort of) planning next year's event...!

Also, thanks to everyone who I gifted "Release the Bats" shirts to by the late Vancouver artist Exu Nazares. He passed this year, only a few months after I interviewed him last. His absence is very much still felt by those close to him -- he was actually a pretty big personality, though not in the booming-egomaniac way that that term can denote; quiet, funny, smart, observant, and wholly unique. I will try to have a few of these shirts on hand for next year, or maybe even a new run of "If I Was a Bat" shirts, since people were asking about shirts.

And do note that when you walk the streets of Vancouver this season, remember, there did used to be bats flying around some of those streetlights. I haven't seen a bat this year, anywhere. If you still have bats, where you are, you might be able to help preserve their populations, which are in serious peril. There are a few organizations involved in bat preservation--the one I reached out to is here, and there's lots to be done. Like Ed Hurrell says at the beginning of that City News clip, do it for the bats!  

Bat Sex Education: Delayed Ovulation, Sperm Storage, Delayed Implantation and Other Weird Bat Facts

See, I like bats. And I'm sad/ scared that they're endangered, and in further danger from White Nose Syndrome, which naturalist Brynne Graham and I discuss in this Straight piece. And yes, I co-wrote a song about hypothetically being a bat, and even once dreamed of flying in the night sky as a bat. Oh, and I organized the October 25th 1st Annual BC Bat Benefit, naturally, which I sure hope catches on! 

But I'm no bat expert. There's tons I don't know about bats; I even had to look up on Youtube whether chiropetera was pronounces with a KAI or CHAI sound at the beginning (it's the former). I have at some point Googled "Are bats rodents?" (they are not). And Brynne told me during said interview many things I had never heard of before. And one of them, involving bat reproduction, kinda blows me away.

I asked her, for instance, what BC's bats are doing around this time of year. She explained that they spend much of August and September eating insects, in order to have energy reserves with which to survive their long hibernation. She also explained that they often mate around this time (though she left out some of that story, which David Attenborough does not, in this eyebrow-raising clip; often male bats, if they wake up for water, will help themselves sexually to hibernating female bats and implant their seed in several of them before going back to bed. (Below is a heat-sensitive image from the Attenborough clip of a male bat moving from hibernating female to hibernating female in a cave; they just sleep through it). 

But how does that work in terms of gestation? Brynne had pointed out that the bats are striving to save energy while they hibernate, so how does being pregnant impact the bat? And the answer apparently is, it doesn't, because bats practice -- Brynne called it "delayed implantation." A bat book I have on hand, meanwhile, actually on Australian bats, by Sue Churchill, connects this with the concept of "delayed ovulation". From Churchill's book:

Before an egg is released, it must develop in a small ovarian space called a follicle. In most mammals the follicle development cannot be stopped without the egg dying. However, bats can delay this succesfully: the process is called delayed ovulation and the signal to release the egg is not given until winter is over. Of course the sperms are now wandering around aimlessly and would die except that bats can store sperms in the female by plugging each sperm head in a tiny depression in the lining cells of the uterus where it is nourished and protected until spring when the egg is released and fertilisation occurs. [Note: this is apparently the preferred method among microbat species].

To avoid having to store sperms for the winter, the female body can permit the fertilisation and early development of the embryo to the stage wehre it can make primitive placental cells. The early embryo, calleda blastocyst, is held loose in the uterus in the process of delayed implantation [the blastocyst implants in the uterine lining, that is; I at first though Brynne had meant a wandering sperm implants in an egg]. When food resources are available again in spring, implantation takes place and the pregnancy resumes growth. 

Like, seriously, which of my readers knew any of that was biologically possible? I'd be the kid in class putting up my hand for question after question, here. Like, the bit about how "bats can store sperms in the female by plugging each sperm head in a tiny depression in the lining cells of the uterus": how is that, exactly, accomplished? Do the sperms somehow know which niches to plug their heads into? Do they have some sort of sensory organ to know where the niches are? Do they essentially also go into hibernation? What are the actual mechanisms at work here, and what are the advantages of doing it this way as opposed to, like most mammals, just getting it on in the spring? (Apparently something like 130 other species of animal practice a similar trick, including bears, armadillos, weasels, seals and kangaroos). 

There is suddenly much more I want to learn about bats. I may pick up a book on Canadian ones! I also want to share another microbat photo, because it's so cute:

Interestingly, too, note that (some) bats perform oral sex, too, apparently, so sex isn't all just a matter of sleeping females and busy males. 

How is there so much interesting stuff out there about bats that I didn't know? Did you realize that the world's smallest mammal (depending on how you measure them, of course) is in fact the bumblebee bat, AKA "Kitti's hog nosed bat?" David M. told me about those today, and I bet he didn't know anything about them before agreeing to do this concert, either. (He too had to look up the correct pronunciation of the word "chiroptera", he tells me.  

If you come to the show tomorrow, I promise there will be other things you don't know, like, for example, the new song David and I have co-authored, which was the thing that required us to learn how to pronounce "chiroptera". Also, even if you, like me, are a longtime NO FUN song, there is at least one NO FUN tune I would guess you have not heard in any variant. David explains,

I'll be doing "Close The Drapes" on Sunday. It's a Jimmy Hamelin song from 1976's Pretentious album, the last one we did before I got the 4-track and the first one on which Dan Vere played guitar on a bunch of songs. Jim wrote the song as a first-person complaint from Udo Kier's Count Dracula in "Blood For Dracula", as well as a tribute to The Count from "Sesame Street". As such, it is unique in the annals of popular music.

That won't be the only tribute to The Count tomorrow, I expect, either. 

No advance tickets, just come to LanaLou's at 2pm.