(as close to the stage as I got, sorry!)
The Dayglo Abortions have always been edgy, but Murray Acton actually managed to offend me last night, by encouraging voter apathy and disenfranchisement at a juncture in Canadian history at what seems the most crucial election that I've participated n.
It escalated quickly: Murray's first comments was that all politicians are corporate shills, all liars, and you shouldn't trust any of them. Which I guess has some truth to it, but a few songs later, he pushed it a bit further: "Don't vote Conservative just because you hate the Liberals! Vote for yourself!" (before "I Am My Own God").
First off, uhh, actually, I never even remotely considered voting Conservative, thanks, but (secondly) had YOU in fact considered voting Conservative, Murray?
How, uh, piquant. (Maybe there are levels of irony at work here that I'm missing?).
But more disturbingly than seeming soft on the Cons, the overall vibe of his comments was anti-voting. Which kind of surprised me. So I just want to say, contra-Cretin, that I think I'm actually going to vote Liberal, this time, myself (probably in about half an hour: I just have to put my socks on); in fact, with Trump flexing his muscles to our south in such volatile, hostile, and destablizing ways, it seems like it's kind of too important an election to do anything but.
Which also means it's too important of an election to encourage people who might otherwise vote Green or NDP to not vote at all, which kinda is what Murray seemed to be doing. You might as well just shill for the Cons there openly, man, because they're the only people you are helping with that kind of talk. With the hot, greasy breath of new American fascism on the backs of our necks... the stakes are simply too high to fuck around. Though on that note, why vote for people (the NDP and the Greens) who have no hope of winning? Who don't even seem to have ambitions more serious beyond maintaining their own positions as career politicians?
By the by, I've voted twice for Jagmeet Singh now, but I have to fess up, here, about the only thing he's done that I was truly impressed by was his taking off his turban on teevee so people could see his hair and how the turban worked and such. I thought that was a genuinely bridge-building, bold, cool move. But mostly he's reduced himself to background noise -- to junk mail pamphlets and predictable social media posturing which has become, so to speak, part of the noise to me.
We need more than that. And so far I've been impressed by the bearing of Mark Carney (he has some fun with Nardwuar, here, if you've missed that). But then, I never actually, unlike Murray, hated the Liberals. I disliked Justin Trudeau, or at least disliked a fair bit of what he did -- the worst of which will probably be seen, in history, to be a botched immigration policy which let in far more people than the country could support, followed by the Libs slamming the door in a way that may well yet leave me jobless, seeking a new gig in ESL with hundreds of other suddenly unemployed teachers and tutors, with the added disadvantage of my being speaking-impaired. Thanks for putting THAT possibility on my horizon, Mr. Trudeau (and Mr. Miller). Hadn't actually seen that one coming.
But that wasn't what pissed me off the most. With apologies to friends (talking about you, here, John) who qualified for CERB, received CERB, and then had the Libs about-face and demand repayment (which you must admit is pretty fucked up, and which has contributed to furthering the delay of what is going to be the greatest fucking rock album Canada has seen since, I dunno, Sexual Roulette?), what pissed me off was Trudeau granting himself emergency powers (just like his Daddy had!) to deal with the fucking trucker's convoy. Despite rulings that ultimately he had no right to do that, we are now seeing the fruit of that action in provincial governments granting themselves emergency powers to deal with a trade war, and which surely will come back again the next time there are serious protests in Canada. It's going to become a go-to move, thanks to Mr. Trudeau -- our equivalent of "executive orders" whenever things get remotely difficult. I mean, seriously, should the Canadian government be able to grant itself the right to access the bank accounts of protestors? No, not any more than the Americans should have the right to detain people without even a pretext of due process and ship them off to El Salvador for indefinite incarceration. There may in fact be times when the government granting itself emergency powers are appropriate -- like the FLQ crisis, for instance, or other life-or-death cases -- but the fucking trucker's convoy? Not so much. Not a precedent Trudeau should have set. We'll be seeing more of that sort of bullshit, guaranteed.
Mind you, Trudeau was short-sighted and arrogant in other ways, putting forth a draconian hate speech bill, ruffling diplomatic feathers around the world, and doing a very ballsy bait-and-switch when it came to scrapping the first-past-the-post system, which platform he abandoned as soon as he took office (thanks to my father-in-law for reminding me of that oldie-but-goodie over breakfast!). But I also think the Liberals did some good things, more or less pulling us through the pandemic (at least more successfully than our neighbours down south, though the Yanks set a low bar indeed) and finally legalizing marijuana (thanks! Had a government gummy earlier tonight, in fact). There's probably more that I could dig up, both good and bad, but suffice it to say that (even with having voted for him once!), I don't like Justin Trudeau.
But Carney strikes me as a much more seasoned, mature, responsible and resourceful person than ol' Blackface JT. I've liked Carney's response to the Trump tariffs so far. I think he has actual business acumen which will serve Canada well. And I do believe that it's important to keep Poilievre out of office, since whatever else he may say, he's ideologically the person closest to Trump, and the person most likely to embrace Trump's influence. We need a strongly nationalistic, forward-thinking government to raise Canada up where it belongs as our, uh, titanic neighbours down south rapidly sink... I admit that I'm mildly surprised to find that I'm planning to vote Liberal again (for the second time ever), but there it is. And I wanted to THANK MURRAY ACTON for giving me the opportunity to put that opinion out into the world. I didn't have an angle to write about the election, and he provided me one. Much obliged!
The Dayglo Abortions, by the way, played a furious set, and the pit was kind of unhinged, with the most aggressive mosher being, amusingly, a 20-something year old girl in a thin silky skirt, who just would not stop (there was a bigger, drunker bald guy in a Municipal Waste hoodie who was a bit more problematic early on but he eventually wore himself down; she just kept going, and going... y'all know Body Count's "Bitch in the Pit?" She was quite a delight to behold -- from a distance).
Filmed "White People" and "Kill Kill Kill," which had some odd electrical mishaps. I've noticed problems with the sound at the Waldorf before -- tonight was the first time I've seen them have problems with the lights! Even Murray finally said something smartassed, asking them if they were trying to save on electricity or something, then saying to keep the fucking lights on on the stage, so he didn't fall off. Weirdly, that resolved matters -- almost like the darkness had been deliberate!
It was all very fun, but the truth is, I wasn't really in the mood. It's been a very long day, and there's been a lot going on in my life -- people I care about have been sick, in hospital, etc. Plus I had just seen a splendid set by Zappostrophe' at the VIFF Centre, and was much more on that page, musically.
Zappostrophe' only played for about an hour, but I sure am looking forward to their May 29th FOX gig, where they'll do a more fullsome set. They were even better than I had remembered, drawing almost exclusively from the window between 1969 and 1974 that I myself favour, Zappawise; I had remembered them being amazing, mind you, but I haven't been listening to Zappa that much this year, so tonight was also about remembering how amazing Zappa's music can be, too. They truly do it justice.
They'll be filming a video at that gig, by the by. And doing a bunch of stuff off Apostrophe ('), and probably repeating "Inca Roads" (which was marvelous) and much more... "Black Napkins," did they say? With newly-minted lyrics? And they'll be breaking out the rubber chicken, they promise (it got cut from the set tonight, though its part was briefly demonstrated in the Q&A, albeit decontextualized; it's a sound effect meant to accompany certain actions performed with the aid of dog-doo snow-cones, if you see what I mean.)
Oh, and speaking of the Q&A, I got, briefly, to inform the audience about echidna penises, apropos of a Zappa tune they played that I suspect some of you have guessed the title of. Echidna penises, considering how remarkable they are, don't come up in public nearly as often as they should.
There was a lot of weird shit today, truth be known -- these are stressful times all round -- but the set by Zappostrophe' was amazing, so thanks.
*by the New Modernettes, but you knew that, right? But note: I'm not weighing it against Hate Speech, here. It's in a different category altogether. Hate Speech is great.