Fugs Film! at the VIFF: a Peter Stampfel Interview

Fugs left to right, 1965: Tuli Kupferberg, Ed Sanders, Ken Weaver, Peter Stampfel, Steve Weber

There is a Peter Stampfel interview apropos of the Fugs on the Straight website, which this is a supplement to.If you don't know the Fugs, you might want to start there, or maybe with Jeffrey Lewis' "History of the Development of Punk on the Lower East Side of NYC, 1950-1975," which puts the Fugs in context. The new documentary about the Fugs, Fugs Film!, screens this Friday at the Cinematheque. You can also see a trailer for it here. 

But meantime, here are two things: witness testimony on Fugs Film! from ARGH!!, who (unlike me) was able to see the film at its first screening, and after that, the full interview with Peter Stampfel, second from the right on the album cover (the guy holding a painting, which, note, is NOT painted by ths chimpanzee who did the painting on the cover of Fugs 4 Rounders Score: I checked.)


Part One: ARGH!! testimony (ARGH!! has disdain for capitals and follows his own conventions of punctuation*, so we are representing him as we have received this):

fugs movie is good…a gave it 5 stars (loved it) on the ballot after the movie…peter and jeffrey lewis give commentary throughout the movie…jeffrey is like a illegitimate son of the fugs…movie made me happy and sad…happy remembering my sprout yeas...i was 10-11 when the fugs started and i was just starting to see the world beyond family school tv cartoons and comic books…rushing home from school to watch cartoons and soupy sales then walter cronkite reporting assassinations and the vietnam war on the cbs evening news…body bags and bombs and crying vietnamese children running from burning villages…the beatles were making little girls ( and most of my friends) scream with adulation... the fugs were singing kill for peace and liking boobs a lot…i’m sad cuz the revolution the fugs were a soundtrack to fizzled and died and not much has changed in the last 60 years…war and corrupt fascist governments on the news everyday today… i graduated from mad magazine to paul krassner’s realist in my early teens…i stole a copy of abbie hoffman’s revolution for the hell of it and steal this book from the rack at seafair drugs across the road from my jr high school...the first fugs album i owned was the fug’s second album…somebody was an ARGHist before me…i found the album at a garage sale…wow…a band called the fucs…then realized someone fucked with the cover using a felt pen…a friend said it's the fugs not the fucs….

i wish i drew this…and i wish coulda attended this show…oct 22 is my birthday…1965…i turned 11

thinking now…weird juxtaposition…fugs film vs butthole surfers the hole truth and nothing butt…
fugs…60s revolutionary beat-proto hippies hoping for change…freaks for peace…utopian dreamers…
buttholes…80s hedonistic freaks out to shock…no redeeming values…the hippie dream turned nightmare…
both reflections of their eras…both entertaining…
i think the buttholes exemplify the decline of modern civilization…sad but true…
kinda kennedy vs trump…i’m glad i’m old…and the end is nigh…
baffled since i was young…why do people keep having children…
i remember reading overpopulation is the number one threat to humanity and survival on the planet…
more people…more hate…more war…not enough food or water...

Part Two: Peter Stampfel

I have interviewed Peter Stampfel many times, but the best two are here and here. And now this!

 Fugs in Rubble, March 1965, by Dave Gahr, who took the Fugs First Album cover photo. This is, weirdly, how the images appear in the press folder, but I'll be expanding on them presently. 


Allan (italics, below): So early on, did the Fugs seem particularly vulgar or edgy to you? Even songs like "I Feel Like Homemade Shit" seem pretty innocent now.

Peter: Well, one of the first points of attraction I had towards the Fugs was the fact that they had these two songs, "Coca Cola Douche" and especially "Bull Tongue Clit." I thought, like, 'Now man, that's in your face!" Y'know? And also you've gotta remember that when they do, "I Feel Like Homemade Shit", it was like, "I feel like homemade yodelodel-odel-odel-ay-ee," because of a reluctance to say "shit" on the record. It was certaintly extremely transgressive, which was one of the things that I thought was so great about it, but on the other side, there was the fact that Sanders was reluctant to say "shit" because it was going to be on a record, it is sort of mirroring a specfic era. That would be early 1965. I don't think there's anything that, y'know, vulgar or over the top on the first album, certainly not by current standards, but by contemporary standards, I could see how it could give some yahoos conniptions.

So you felt like it was edgy at the time. 

 
Edgier, more edgy, than anything previously had come close to even. Like, we talked about doing a version of "Get a Job", only (sings) "lick lick lick lick lick yum yum yum yum yum: Rim Job!" Y'know? (laughs). If I had have stayed with the group, I'm sure we would have worked it out. But anyway.

I could see why, actually, Sanders might worry about the word "shit", especially on the album cover, but... what about the line about heifer fuckin', which isn't censored?

That's curious (laughs)!

So tell me about "Bull Tongue Clit." It never made it onto a record? Was it an Ed or Tuli piece?

It was Ed. I don't think it ever did make it onto a record. It was not a great song! All I remember of it was, "She's got a bull tongue clit, she's got a bull tongue clit" (laughs). But it certainly was one of the most memorable titles ever. [It can be heard at about the 18:40 mark of this 1968 concert]. 

L-to-R Stampfel, Kupferberg, Sanders, Weaver, Weber, image by Dave Gahr

How did you end up going to see the Fugs, the first time, at the Peace Eye Bookstore?

 
Weber said, "Hey, you should see what Sanders and Kupferberg are doing, they've written all these...," y'know, "and they're having a rehearsal", and so I went right over. And they didn't have any instruments instead of Weaver's hand drum, and I instantly volunteered to back them up. I absolutely wanted in on this: this is, like, fantastic! How could I not want in? And it was with really fun. In retrospect, I wish I'd stuck with them, despite, y'know, Weber. But then again, it's somewhat foolish to talk about what one could have done because it would have been neat, y'know? But one didn't, so the neatness never happened.

What do you mean, "despite Weber?"

I quit playing with Weber because one, as soon as the Beatles appeared, Weber realized on some subconscious level that we had some chance of a level of success greater than had been previously anticipated, and he started, basically, refusing to work out new songs. And on the other hand, he'd bitch onstage, "I'm tired of these old songs." I mean, working on a song involves playing it three times, period, and that's all it took to work out a new song. But he would bitch about how there no new songs, and I'd go, "Okay, here, I got new songs" and he would stomp out of the room.

And then he started missing gigs. On the third occasion, the Rounders were playing at Club 47 in Boston in July of 1965, and he decided to hitchhike there instead of taking a bus, and so he didn't show up when the gig actually started. That was the third no-show that he'd done. And also he was taking, like, at that time, prodigious amounts of speed, even for him. Like he went through this one period for several days, he was babbling away, and every sentence he said would have nothing to do with the sentence prior or subsequent. I mean, I wish that it could have been tape recorded for posterity. It would have been a cultural touchstone for the era.

Do you know about Hot Shoppes? They were this diner chain. And we had a gig in Baltimore and it's lunchtime and the place is crammed with people getting their lunch. And he proceeds to give the waitress some hashish: "hey, yeh-ye-yeah, you just smoke it in a pipe." 1965, in a crowded public place, offering drugs...? He was cruising for bigtime trouble. And given all these cumulative factors, missing that gig was the last straw [the two would reunite a couple of years later on Indian War Whoop].

In Ed Sanders' book Fug You, there's mention of a gig for Verve or such that Weber played at that you weren't on.

 
Weber continued playing with the Fugs. I quit playing with the Fugs because Weber was playing with the Fugs and I wanted nothing to do with Weber. I realize I hadn't made that specific point clear. And when Weber got kicked out, they had a bigger than previous concert opportunity and they were waiting for Weber to get onstage, and Weber was tuning, and tuning. Like...

...one legendary thing that Weber did before I met him was, he'd show up in Washington Square, right, and people had heard about this kid, he would have been 18... he'd show up with a guitar, and he'd tune, and tune, and tune, and at 5 o'clock, the cops would march you away from the fountain with their nightsticks, meaning, like, "Stop playing now", while waving sticks. You couldn't start playing til noon, and at 5 o'clock sharp, dozens of cops were there, to make sure you stopped. So according to [Stampfel's first wife and the writer of "Bird Song"] Antonia, who was there with him at the time, he would tune and tune and tune and finally, like, at one minute to five, he would suddenly play, like, a frantic, amazing one minute, and then the cops would shut him down.

Anyway, then what happened [at the Fugs gig] was, he was tuning and tuning and tuning and then he went backstage to tune, and then he didn't show up, and Sanders went to get him. And he had crawled into a large box and fallen asleep. That was the occasion that caused him to be fired from the Fugs. I don't know if Sanders specifically said when he was kicked out, but it was either late 66, or somewhat early 1967.

He was not the only one using amphetamine, however. You have this song "New Amphetamine Shriek", tell me about that? The song is almost kinda anti-drug, but you were also into it?

 
Actually, Weber and I did tons of speed when we met, and there were all sorts of... it was a feared drug, like a very bad drug. There was a bunch of early speedfreaks in Chicago who were referred to as "meth monsters"; this would be, like, 1962. And this friend of mine from Chicago was there, and there were all these people hanging around, and he said something about meth monsters, and a guy with a needle full of speed came up to him and shot himself up in the neck: "You want to see a meth monster?" And blood squirts out and gets on the guy (laughs). That's the sort of behaviour that these meth monsters would behave like! And in the folk scene at the time, it was like, groups of methadrine users would get into black magic, and then they would proceed to do black magic against other groups of amphetamine users. I mean, I heard this, but the source of that information was Chester Anderson, who I subsequently found out was a pathological liar. Chester Anderson is a complicated person!

I quit taking speed because it allegedly would kill you if you took it for any amount of time. And in the winter of 63-64, I got really really sick, which I attributed to speed, and I quit taking speed. The first two albums were recorded on amphetamine and weed. And so I quit then, but Weber and Antonia, my old lady, continued.

One line [in the song] about speed was how speed made you not want to have sex. Which was actually the opposite; personally I found that speed made me really, extremely horny, and it was possible to have an orgasm and then have another orgasm and then have another. Also, orgasms lasted longer and felt better, which is the reason that many members of the gay community are into, like, sex on speed. I know Tennessee Williams was. He liked to have his sexual partners shoot him up with speed before sex, that was like a kink of his. So that line, "I don't have a bedtime, I don't need to cum" -- it was a song about speed with some accurate speed information and some inaccurate speed information.

Yes, and there's the line, "If you don't like sleeping and don't want to screw/ You should take lots of amphetamines too." If that wasn't your experience, why did you include that inaccurate information?

 
Because I felt kind of weird about how super into sex speed would make me. This is kind of like, possibly, tied to Sanders not wanting to say "shit" on a record, despite our extremely transgressive attitude, we were still products of the time. And I would say there was a degree of shame involve, like I'm mildly, uh... embarrassed isn't the word... I haven't been embarrassed in decades. I consider embarrassment like an altered state, another way of being high in a strange way; like when one is embarrassed, one's feelings are more intense.

You're more self-aware. Like a bad trip without the drugs.

Yeah, yeah.  

So have you seen the film?

I've seen the film maybe three times, I think. It's excellent! I think they did a really terrific job, and also, most of the material in it, the majority was stuff I didn't know. Like, the Ken Weaver backstory is, "Holy shit!" The film is fucking great. Like, I don't see how a much better job could have been done. There were a couple of screenings in which I was a participant in a panel afterwards, so I had to see it a couple of times, and I even enjoyed seeing it multiple times. I'm not much of a multiple watcher of films. I would absolutely give it the highest rating.

Terrific, let me clear up two quick things. After you left the Fugs in 1965, you did not play with them again, correct?

They invited me to do one show with them two years ago, period, that was it. It was a Fugs show where I joined them for a couple of songs. And Ed was willing to be interviewed for the Rounders documentary, Bound to Lose, and I would run into him occasionally, and we would talk, but I don't think there was a further occasion on which I played with them again.

And we should also mention the Jeffrey Lewis album of Tuli Kupferberg songs.

Oh yeah, yeah!

That's a marvelous album. How did it feel, revisiting those songs with a different band?

Well, for one thing, I hadn't heard most of those songs! I wasn't aware of the fact that Tuli wrote so many songs, and so many songs that were really, like, terrific. Jeffrey befriended Tuli in the 1990s or 80s, and that's when he learned a lot of these songs, and after Tuli died, Jeffrey would do a memorial on his birthday. And at a point, he asked me to join, you know? And he was playing, also, with Steve Espinola, who I hadn't met previously, who subsequently joined my band [he actually seems to be in both the Atomic Meta-Pagans and the Ether Frolic Mob with Peter, and perhaps others]. But what happened was, for Tuli's birthday, we'd get together and do Tuli songs, and we'd often do new ones, to be non-repetitive. And we kept saying, "We should record these," which we finally did, which I'm very, very delighted about. I highly recommend the album of us doing Tuli songs.

Did you stay in touch with Tuli?

 
We lived in the same neighbourhood, and he would be peddling stuff with his wife on Spring Street, which is two blocks from me. We were about a five minute walk from each other, so we would run into each other all the time.

Peddling stuff like what? Poetry, or...?
Poetry, cartoons. His wife made jewelry and countercultural geegaws.

Further observations to be had in the Straight piece, including Bev Davies' story of seeing the Fugs and Tuli. For more information about Fugs Film! or to buy advance tickets, go here: https://viff.org/whats-on/viff26-fugs-film/

*Addendum from ARGH!! 

tanx for sharing my views on the fugs and the state of humanity today...uncivilization...i don't have a disdain for capitals and punctuation...lazy one finger typer...usually a coffee or cocktail in the other hand...also i dig ee cummings...letter writing and comic captions i print all capitals...everyone shouts in my comics...my cursive handwriting is a scribble no one can read...

Silly distraction: My9Albums X 5 or... uh, 6... 7... 8... now at 72... no, 81... uh...

This website allows you to generate a list of 9 albums, with thumbnails, so you can post your favourite albums on social media. I'm now up to 45. Interestingly, they recognized the Spores' Schizofungi! (but had no cover art for it, nor a way I could upload it); but Red Herring's Taste Tests couldn't even be selected.

Some of those I barely listen to, but they have historical importance. Some, like the Moe Tucker, I picked because cover art was available, as compared to others by the same artist I think I like more (I Spent a Week There the Other Night, in the case of Moe). And maybe some of them only seemed great to me because of limitations on what I had experienced at the time I discovered them, and might not seem that cool if I went back now, but I loved them once, they were important to me, and they still have hooks in me. 

There are a few omissions that I can't help; like, I can't pick between Velvet Underground albums, though I guess their first belongs on there. And shit, what about Big Star's Third? And there are a bunch of those albums that I have gotten less mileage from than Goddo's double live album. Am I sheepish about sticking in Goddo? Lighve: Best Seat in the House, with the jeans-clad girl's butt on the cover. Boy I loved that record when I was 14 (and I still do have it today). And what about the Crucifucks!? I could almost do another based on the Crucifucks first album. 

But I won't, unless I wake up with five other records in the forefront of my brain and feel compelled to do another one of these. It might happen? 

Shit:

One note on the one below: I do love "Justine" off Ja-Jazz, but I was looking for Spot the Difference, which isn't an available option. 

...and Red Herring's Taste Tests, which isn't available as a choice, gets to be #100. 

Casa Sueño Night Two - notes and photes

All photos by me, this one is from the first night though. 

The Furniture is kinda too great to have a name like the Furniture. It suggests something you take for granted, the background of the scene, but you just try to take them for granted when they're onstage. And sorry, but they were a better opener than Superchannel the night before. They even had the balls (or ovaries?) to do a Stooges cover with a bonafide Stooge in the room! They're kind of Pixies-meet-garage and Aramis Starfish is a very compelling frontperson, plus the guitarist offers a lot of interesting tones and it's fun to watch Lana thank LanaLou's for letting the band play. (She seems very differently pitched than Aramis, much more solid/ grounded/ serious). 

The set by Casa Sueño was the same or close to the same as the first night, and the high points for me were the rockin'er numbers, like "Electric Chair." I want a lyric sheet for that one -- what does tugging on one's mortal knot entail? It can't possibly mean what it brings to mind for me...

I didn't take many photos of the night (Bob was there!) but I did get a couple I like of actor Tom Scholte with Watt. 

Bruce Stayloose came by as well and sat at our table with Tom and Bob and Erik Iversen and Erika; I gifted him a Jerry Jerry and the Sons of Rhythm Orchestra LP (and received gifts in return), and heard stories of how he recovered a Watt album he'd made the mistake of selling because he recognized damage done to the cover (a buddy had spilled beer on it). Later, when it turned up much later at a garage sale, he knew it for his own. 

It brings to mind, perhaps weirdly, a Kathy Acker quote: "We wear our mutilations as badges. Wearing badges is the only proof we have of human love." At least, I applied that quote when I recovered a Dead Kennedys EP I sold because it also had recognizable damage to the cover. Without the patch that got torn off when someone taped a coat-check tag to it, I would never have recognized the album when I stumbled across it at Audiopile. 

He showed off his girl's first-press Double Nickels, too, which Watt vouched for as the true first. I had that once, but my current is more "umpteenth reprint." 

Bruce got them both signed. Watt was pretty patient with signing stuff. It's interesting, because people (even me) were pretty restrained at the Baiza-Corsano gig. Not so much at LanaLou's. 

Gerald wore a Tyranny and Mutation shirt, by the way. Shit, I want one too! 

It was a great night, but I don't really want to give away too much of the material they played, so the only vid I'm posting for now is the same song I posted yesterday, "Diggin' That Hole", but now at a different angle. 

I got some stories from Watt about What Makes a Man Start Fires?, too. He had pointed out the first night that it was the first album he wrote all the music for (tho' not all the lyrics). We continued that story the second night: I asked if it began with a piece of Pettibon art or if the band had come up with the title and commissioned the cover. Closer to the former than the later, but, he told me, he'd had an experience as a child of having accidentally started a fire. "I was playing with matches. I was seven." This was when he was growing up in Virginia. 

Flash forward some years to adulthood. "It was a weird time in my life," he explained, adding that he'd been born with bad knees. He'd just had knee surgery and was laid up. He was going through a box of art by Pettibon and found the drawing you see, and it reminded him of having started a fire once himself.

So. Anyhow, I've always loved this album. This and The Punch Line (and the Post-Mersh CD that combines them) are probably my go-to Minutemen albums, so it's really cool to know a bit more about them. They're not their best-loved by the many (and we all know what their objective masterpiece is),  but they're the ones I enjoy most, now. 

I kinda bungled trying to tell him my own story of how I acquired (a long time ago) the first, textured-cover version of The Punch Line, which I swapped (I think for a Bruce Springsteen record!) with a couple of editors of the anarchist Open Road zine when I crashed at their place with friends after that Cramps/ Slow gig, but let's face it, no one really wants to know all the stories of how you acquired their albums, do they? Besides, I don't have that textured cover anymore.  

Anyhow, that was a great two night stand (and Mike Baggetta explained on mic that it was in fact their first-ever two-night stand). You should see this band if you can! They'll be playing Seattle soon, I think for another two-night stand... and then recording in Oregon. Looking forward to that record. 

Meantime I got two fIRHOSE albums I don't know so well, including fROMOHIO, which Tom says is his favourite. It's also the one fIREHOSE album I've never listened to before -- I think I even gave my CD of it to a friend. And now I have it signed by Watt and endorsed by a local actor/ filmmaker I admire. (Tom, you really really have to put your movie Crime up on Vimeo, so I can direct people to it!). 

And I got a Tortoise record, my first ever on vinyl (I have a couple of their CDs around). Because John really impressed me too. I think Tortoise went over my head a bit the first time I listened to them, to be honest. Glad to have a second chance to re-investigate.  

Happy travels, guys, and thanks for putting up with us! 

Casa Sueño turns LanaLou's into a House of Dreams

You people who didn't come last night realize that Watt is singing songs, new songs, right? Only a couple, but...

Most of my observations are being held for print reviews, but you can have that pic, and this one of Mike Baggetta with a rapt Aaron Chapman behind him. 

Oh, and there's video. 

Watt is a saint, sure, but Herndon (from Tortoise) and Baggetta were where the real musical action of the night was; they're amazing Watt seems to be mostly down for a real good time, takin' it pretty easy for a man who writes operas. But Watt having a real good time and takin' it pretty easy is in itself a joy to behold. And New! Songs! As fun as the days of pissbottles and pissbags, if you know what I mean "Truckstop Joe", hell yeah!

Got to tell Watt that "Pissbags and Tubing" meant a lot to me during my cancer surgery hospitalizations. ("I didn't fully appreciate that song before!").  

I have seen him five times now (bandleader twice, once with Baiza/ Corsano and once with the Stooges) but last night's gig was the one I enjoyed the most. Grateful to go again tonight. 

Oh, and Watt told me that What Makes a Man Start Fires? is the first album he ever did where he wrote all the music himself (which explains how cohesive it is!); that he plays "Bob Dylan Wrote Propaganda Songs" with a pick, hence the bubbly-doubled effect on the notes (I mean, I bet a bass player would know that already!). 

Aaron, coming out of the Lana's men's room as I was going in, remarked about seeing Watt with the Stooges (which I did too, but in Seattle; his was, I think he said, in Ontario?). "Did he hump the amp?" I asked. "I think so", he answered. 

He humped the amp in Seattle, but he still looked to be having more flat-out FUN last night. And those socks! 

(His feet seemed to tap in different time signatures to each other, note).

No merch. No Minutemen covers, nor fIREHOSE, nor Engine Room stuff. Will the set be the same tonight? 

Still prolly a chance to see this, way too few people (-50) were there last night. 

Watt's back!

So I did this in the Straight, and guess I should mention it here, too! Casa Sueño is in town Tuesday-Wednesday. Their bandcamp is here, but Mike Baggetta and Watt played together for years previous in mssv. So check that out too!

Footnote: Watt's great and Watt's Watt (which is enough!) but I'm turning into a Baggetta fan. Some hot guitar goin' on! They play Seattle tonight... 

Belated RIP for Jonny Bones

Wrote a lot about Jonny Bones (Jon Aaron) while he was alive, then missed marking his passing, a few weeks ago (Aug. 21). My last one-on-one interactions with him were July 2026, when we swapped a few messages about Stephen King's The Tommyknockers, which I'd read the first third of and loved. Jonny was the biggest King fan I knew, even visiting his old stomping grounds in Maine as a bucket-list travel destination after he found out he was sick. He remarked, in part: 

It's a very strange book. King wrote it while wildly high and it shows. If you cut about 200 pages or so I think there's a really good story in there, but it gets very messy and bogged down in the middle for sure. He's trying to do his big expansive cast/town thing, but he keeps getting sidetracked distracted. Still, when it's good, it's really good.

I replied that the first third was amazing, I thought -- 200 pages of development of just two characters, which I always thought was King's strong suit, character development, and he replied that that was the focused part: 

But wait till you get to the hologram clocktower and superpower egg cartons and flying coke machine. It's a ride for sure. 

Shortly thereafter I got thrown from the book, when I got to the middle part he'd referenced, where after 200 said pages of character development, King completely walks away from the characters he'd invested so much in and proceeds to tell the story of everyone else in the town, a vignette at the time. "Aha, I see what Jonny means".

Maybe I should go back and finish it now! 

But that was our last private exchange, not our last actual one; a bit later on, he popped up in the comments on a Facebook post, back in August, when I listed some reactions to recent horror films I'd seen. I liked Backrooms most of all, but ranked Disclosure Day about Obsession, and while he agreed that Backrooms was special, he argued that I was wildly mistaken about the others -- he thought Spielberg had lost it and that Obsession was the far better film. This was just a couple of weeks before he passed -- which I kind of love, that he was talking horror and SF movies with friends until the end. 

Fittingly, there's a PWYC movie memorial at the Rickshaw on Thursday, with films at 7 and 9pm (also an update to his GoFundMe). Don't know what movies! I was at the final Hollywood Horrorshow back in June 2025 (they played the DePalma Carrie), but the movie I'll remember him for re-introducing me to was a bit after that, when they screened The Monster Squad at the Rickshaw after a benefit show; Jon told me it had been his favourite movie since he was a kid. I'd forgotten how delightful it was! 

RIP, Jonny, thanks for your service to your community...! 

RIP Doug Donut

Shocked to hear about Doug Donut dying the other day (his mother posted about it today on social media and everyone on the scene has been commented). 

I have heard LOTS of things about Donut, and not all good, but he was kind of an inescapable part of the music scene in Vancouver, and was always all right with me (even that one time at LanaLou's when he kinda aggressively cadged a drink off me, he did it with a certain wit and flair. I asked him what he'd been working on and he held up the beer I bought him and said "You!" Or something to that effect -- I actually forget the exact exchange but I do remember that both of us laughed). Last time I crossed paths with him was a few weeks ago at the Princeton, where Tony Walker was playing in a band without him, and I asked Doug why he wasn't on the kit; he said he'd hurt himself, but he offered me a hug, which kinda surprised me (it's not like I knew him well). He seemed as positive and happy as I've seen him, had a very different vibe to him. Other people on social media have said similar things, that he'd told them that apparently he'd turned some sort of corner in his life, which I hope is true, because I don't think he exactly lived in happy places a lot of the time (Death Sentence were many things but the happiest punk band in Vancouver was not one of them). Apparently it was an aneurysm that took him out. Dead Spots (whom I interviewed here; it's basically the Liquor Kings 2.0, but swap Terry Russell for Randy Bowman) dedicated their opening song to him tonight at the Princeton, a cover of the Stranglers' "No More Heroes," because apparently Donut was a huge Stranglers fan. 

He also always kinda reminded me of Chris Mulkey in Patti Rocks. Which is neither here nor there, I guess, but I don't have a photo of Donut handy, so -- here's Mulkey, see what I mean?

RIP, Doug Donut. ...Now how does one avoid aneurysms, anyhow? 

The Weight review: engaging up til the end, but THEN...

The quality of suspense is an interesting thing. I no longer worry that much, when watching a film, about whether everything will work out for the characters; I do feel those sorts of feelings, if a film is at all effective (as I did with The Weight, the film in question here) but for most films, if I am engaged by them, the main question for me as a viewer -- the strongest element of the suspense I feel -- is a critical one: "Will I like this film when it ends, or will they manage to fuck it up?"

Up to about the 105-minute mark for The Weight, I was held in just that sort of suspense, which is not bad considering the film is only 113 minutes long (and the last three minutes are credits). There was in fact even a moment where my inward critical monologue was screaming, "cut to black, cut to black, cut to black NOW" where, if they had done so, I would have liked the film a whole lot more (during the scene where people are passing around a cigarette in a car; nothing more needed to be said or done at that point -- everything else could have been left to the imagination and the film would have been much stronger for it). 

But then... well, I don't want to spoil anything for you. I'll give you a warning before I do.  

It's not like the film had been perfect up to that point. Along the way, there had been a few things I did not care for, particularly depictions of racism and sexism that felt more contemporary than historical, that kind of took away from the film being a period piece. But I could see why, for instance, the film is being likened by some critics to The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and Sorcerer (and/ or The Wages of Fear, of course). Those are all vastly better films, but there are similarities. There were also scenes where I thought of Rituals, another favourite film of mine, though not one that gets whipped out quite so often as a comparison point. The Pacfic Northwest landscapes (which seem to be actually those of Bavaria???) are gorgeous and well filmed. The music is effective and suspenseful, there's some interesting edits, and the cast is great -- Hawke and Crowe, natch, but it's particularly nice to see Austin Amelio do something new (Dwight from The Walking Dead; this is the only other performance of his I've seen, I think. He's talented -- a James Woods for a new generation). There are a couple of clever bits of problem-solving (moving the rock) and effective, thrilling set pieces (the swing bridge, say, which, while having nothing on the swing bridges in Sorcerer, did get Erika and I squirming in our seats with that more base form of suspense). 

But in the end, the film I was reminded of more was Jules Dassin's Thieves Highway, and mostly because that film arrives at a perfect ending, then has a totally unnecessary bit added that breaks the mood of grim, pro-socialist cynicism about capitalism that goes before. 

Ah, well. 

As for the nature of those minutes, we venture now into spoiler territory, which you are welcome to skip if you still intend to see the film (but walk, don't run). It's pretty good, after all; I enjoyed it pretty much as much as can be reasonably hoped (because I have low expectations these days); I just didn't respect it as much as I'd hoped... But (SPOILERS COMMENCE, STOP NOW) Erika's first comment to me as the credits rolled was to observe that she bet I didn't like "the happy ending", and I feel like I must mention that and qualify it, lest anyone misunderstand: it was not, in fact, the happy ending I objected to per se. It still would have been a happy ending if they cut to black at the aforesaid smoking scene; it's not like I need everyone to lose all the time in order to take a story seriously. No, it was the tone of the last few minutes, the way that happy ending was handled, with Lynyrd Skynyrd's upbeat (and highly period-inappropriate) "Call Me the Breeze", the giggling of a child, a fast and fun car ride, and all sorts of promises (mostly involving a teddy bear) being made good on, making a film that had clearly wanted to invite comparison with grim existentialist/ socialist classics of yore into, yep, another feelgood film for the whole family, so you can leave the theatre feeling cheery and upbeat!!!

I do not go to see films so I can leave the theatre feeling cheery and upbeat, and don't like to see films pander to people who DO have that expectation, so my respect for the film rather plummeted in those moments. Plus note, filmmakers: "Call Me the Breeze" was written by JJ Cale, not John Cale, as you say in the credits. They're different people; I recall figuring that out when I was about 15. Not much excuse for that kinda mistake. 

Anyhow, bedtime here. The thing I am happiest about with the film is that we saw it theatrically, because now I won't be tempted to buy the blu-ray. 

It's a C+ movie at best, which is a shame, because it coulda been even a high B if the ending had been just a bit more in keeping with the rest of the movie. 

Vinyl wish list

There's not much left on the ol' vinyl wishlist. Might add the odd thing as I think of it but I'm mostly doing pretty well. These are albums I'd still want to get, however, if they were priced reasonably (I know where there's an Earthquake Glue but it's not at a price I'd pay!).  

John Cooper Clarke: Disguise in Love

The Soft Boys: A Can of Bees

Yello: Solid Pleasure

Guided By Voices: Do the Collapse, Universal Truths and Cycles, Earthquake Glue, The Bears for Lunch

The Cramps: Flamejob

Volcano Suns: Career in Rock

Articles of Faith: Give Thanks 

Victims Family: The Germ 

Alice Donut: Bucketfulls of Sickness and Horror in an Otherwise Meaningless Life, Mule, Revenge fantasies of the impotent, The Untidy Suicides of your Degenerate Children

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

Sonic Youth: Sister, but with the original uncensored cover 

The Dictators: Bloodbrothers, and maybe then everything else? But that "Stay With Me" song has sunk deep hooks, thanks to the Smugglers. 

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

Deep Purple: Infinite

Stuck at home with the COVID blues again

Is it COVID? Dunno. No tests around the house and I'm told they're not easy to come by now, but it doesn't feel like a normal cold. Rattle started deep and now it's moving up. Cough is growing productive & my throat is only just starting to hurt a little. Missed gigs I really wanted to see on Friday and Sunday and a movie I cared about on Monday. Stayed indoors all day today -- did a little writing but mostly I slept (two naps). Will I be well in time for Cousin Harley on the 18th? I very much doubt it, but we'll see. The strongest symptom is actually just the fatigue... 

The Butthole Surfers: playful, revelatory documentary to screen at the Rio!

The new Butts doc is screening at the Rio on Monday, and it is the most fun rock-doc I have seen in a long time -- since the Sparks movie, at least! I have actually caught a cold or COVID or some other virus, so I am now officially going to be missing the screening and finishing the movie via the screener. This is in conflict with what is said in the Straight article, but plans change -- I only started feeling the symptoms of this sumbitch last night (I am missing Stick Men tonight too; sucks, eh? I don't want to make anyone else sick, so...). 

In  any event, fuck all that, here's the puppet of Gibby used in the film. The puppetry is a real delight! 

In fact, I loved every minute of the film I saw (30 in all, but I've watched those 30 minutes three times now). In many ways the happiest moment of the film flashes back to an interview I did for issue 89 of the Big Takeover, I'd talked at some length with Paul Leary -- an outtake of which appears here on this very blog. This is Paul's revision of the cover of that issue!: 

(By the by, Cocky Bitches, seen in mirror-image on his t-shirt, are another band Paul plays with! Real fun. Also check out his last solo album here).

One question that we couldn't really get into in the finished BT piece, though we talked about it, involved the possible concern that the band's name could be taken as homophobic (note for them what wants warnings: there are some actual homophobic slurs referenced in what follows). It seemed at least plausible that someone might have reacted that way, as the name, I explained, feels potentially to be as much of a slur ("get away from me, you butthole surfer!") as are other "blank-blanker" constructions, like the one alluded to in that song by Ween. (Y'all know this, right? Entertainingly discussed here). 

(It was Mike Usinger who added the Ween reference to the Straight piece, of course.) I am not, note, afraid of using the constructions at hand, involving cocks, poles, and fudge, and the sucking, smoking, and packing of the same, but we live in an online world governed by brainless robots, so... best not to get the piece censured. 

Anyhow, getting back to the Big Takeover piece, Leary thoughtfully heard me out and countered that a core member of the band was gay, which did seem to resolve matters, but... which member? We did some back-and-forthing and Googling and so forth and decided that while it might not be a huge secret or anything,  that member was not publicly out at that point. I forget how the final piece read but we didn't go there. (Actually I believe the late Teresa Taylor was also queer, so there were two members of the band in this category--she wasn't the person Paul and I spoke about). 

So it's a sit-up-and-take-notice-moment for me, in the film, that said member of the band comes out. I am going to be maddeningly coy about it and not say who, but we get the following quote (and again, slur alert!): "Most of my friends were so turned on by the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders. I was turned on by the Dallas Cowboys! For somebody my age in Texas, back then, it was like you had this horrible, horrible dark secret.that you can't tell anyone about." 

In the film, the interview subject draws out the N for emphasis: "annnnnyone", then continues, "Because f-gs get their asses kicked. So to be in a punk rock band? Yes! Hell yes!"

I mean, maybe I'm happier about that section of the film than makes sense -- maybe I'm projecting something, or maybe I'm remembering being called a f-g and getting my ass kicked in Maple Ridge in the 1980s, regardless of how I identified, and cheering because I can kinda understand where the member is coming from. Maybe it's just that I couldn't write what I wanted to back at the time, and am now liberated! 

...But if you're worried somehow that this film is going to be disturbing or too dark, well, that's not the experience I'm having (at least halfway). I'm feeling joy, watching the story of this band coming together, and sheer happiness over Tom  J. Stern's craftsmanship and playfulness. The film (I'm adding this sentence after having finished the film) does go to some dark places, including some personal revelations that I had no idea about, that I think Stern/ the band are putting into public for the first time. But the overall experience is very, very positive.   

As for the puppetry, Paul, when we spoke a few years ago about the film said, "I’m not sure how the puppet was made. Gibby seemed very happy to interact with it and to operate it, so I’m guessing he likes it. It’s pretty badass. There will be puppets made of the rest of us. They could probably just use a bowling pin for mine."

I liked that quote enough I'm using it again. The actual Puppet Paul is on the left in the middle row:

For more info, go here: https://riotheatre.ca/movie/butthole-surfers-the-hole-truth-and-nothing-butt/

Geoff Berner, COVID, last night's show at LanaLou's... and Jack Reacher

So first off, let me clarify something about COVID. I do actually think Geoff Berner's views about COVID are a bit extreme. We talked about COVID in our recent feature for the Straight. Actually, we talked quite a bit more about it than made the final article. For instance, there's this paragraph that got cut (I guess Mike felt there was too much COVID in the piece?). 

"The government has pretty brutally misled people about the nature of the disease", Berner says on a Zoom call with the Straight. He cites things like emphasizing handwashing over the need for masks, despite COVID being spread through airborne transmission. "It's great to wash your hands and all, but that has nothing to do with COVID. And they're still pretending that it doesn't affect kids! That was the scariest thing, when they opened everything up without giving the vaccine to the kids yet, because they claimed it didn't do anything to them; now long COVID is topping asthma as the number one childhood illness. It would be nice to get this information out to folks, but generally there's been an abandonment of public health, to a large extent. That's why they've got measles coming back..."

Now some things Geoff says make good sense to me -- like, it was fuckin' stupid to go stand in the basement at Alf House with 50 other punks for that Night Court show (the show I reference in the article, as the last time I caught COVID: cramped, poor air quality, not much ventilation: bad fuckin' idea to pack 50+ people into that space). But there are other considerations at play, and if we reason backwards from my actual practices, we can sort of uncover the principles at work; they're clearly different from Geoff's.   

I mean, I don't wear COVID masks on public transportation unless I think, as today, that I'm actually coming down with something. Basement of ALF House aside, I do still go to concerts and stand around unmasked (...unless, again, I'm actually sick). I mostly don't think about COVID that much, and to the extent that I do, it's more about being afraid of giving it to others than its potential impacts on myself (my body seems to be able to handle it okay: it has been pretty mild the last few times I've had it. The first time round with it was a doozy but it's hard to be that afraid of something that seems no worse than a mild cold).  

Perhaps I have been swayed by misinformation, perhaps I don't know who to trust, but I can kind of understand why Canadian public health is in the state it is in (...a state of denial, say), and am not as accusatory about it as Geoff is. Like, I am not advocating for a world where governments issue masks to all people free of charge, to be worn in all public spaces at all times until... when? I'm actually not entirely clear what Geoff thinks the endgame is there: "This is how we live now?" That we mask up at all times in public in the same way that, like, we wear shoes and pants and so forth? That we not do things indoors unless we're all masked and/ or fast-tested? That's going to be expensive and it's going to be wasteful as hell and even bad for the environment: I have no yearning to return for a time when there were discarded used COVID masks clogging up every gutter!). 

On the other hand, I just had an older friend come out of a scary two week experience of COVID -- someone with enough "comorbidities" (easily my least favourite word of the pandemic) that I was afraid for them. I know people with long COVID. There are definitely things out there online, seemingly reputable journals and, um, government studies (I dedicate that last "um" to Murray Acton), that suggest that each new exposure to COVID carries the potential for long COVID and/ or unpredictably serious, poorly understood health consequences, possibly permanent.

And though, like I say, I worry more about transmitting it than catching it, I've had COVID six times now. We might say I am also at high risk, since I teeter on the line of diabetes as a way of life. Maybe even though the last five infections have been no worse than the common cold, one does not want to discover that it is infection seven that fucks me up for life, you know? 

I'm also not as convinced about COVID vaccines as Geoff is, given that three of the people I know who have not been vaccinated also (perhaps coincidentally) have all apparently not had the disease yet. Anecdotal, sure, but kinda weird!

Mostly I don't know what to believe. One thing I know, though: if I develop a sore throat and feel a cold coming on, I do not perform non-essential tasks in public. I might still go to work, with a mask on, or even buy groceries, if they're essential. Once I even went to a concert (but I had committed to write about it, and wore a mask the whole night). But strictly for pleasure, let's-go-to-a-show nights out? If I feel like something is coming on? No. It's irresponsible. 

So I did not go see the show at LanaLou's last night. I very much wanted to, wrote about it, etc, and I'm glad to hear the turnout was good, but I've got a rasp in my respiratory system and a tickle in my throat and I actually did feel worried that I was going to spread something if I went. It remains to be seen how bad this is, and I'm still going to go to work today -- in fact, am editing this on the bus --and I'm not going to give up my Stick Men ticket yet (for Sunday--I wrote about that show, too). But I distinctly felt like I was coming down with something last night, and Erika and I bailed.

I hope people went and had fun. We ended up here at Chez Lax-MacInnis watching Season IV of Jack Reacher Reacher. There is a whole lot to be ceitical of, if that is your bent. I'm not a fan of Alan Ritchson, for one, find his acting and line-delivery only a bit more nuanced than vintage Schwarzenegger and his physicality a bit odd (he kinda walks like he has a plunger shoved up his ass), even though he's obviously a better match for the role than, say, Tom Cruise. I also find the show lacks a flair for dialogue, which is basically just read flat from the books. But I have read an embarrassing number of those books. They are very compelling, and some of that definitely carries over to the show, and especially the new season...

ADDED NOTE: Sept 17: The following was written some years after I last read the novel, based on memories triggered by the series. Actually, since I'm down with something (still not yet determined to be COVID), I've been rereading the book and discovering not only that the novel is vastly more cerebral than the show, but the "plot" at the heart of the plot is vastly more real world, and dated, speaking to a world still very much in the shadows of 9/11, and written for people who had lived through the years from 2001 to 2008, when the book was written... they have made vast changes to the book, which I do not do justice to below. I am adding this as a disclaimer: I get stuff wrong in what follows. Also have a lot more respect for the book than the show-- the story is vastly less implausible, and also much more explicitly Islamophobic. 

Oh, and Reacher and Lila don't get it on, either, in the book. I recommending reading the novel either instead of watching the series, or as a very entertaining supplement to it (you can probably go either way, but I would suggest watching the show first, then reading the book). 

I must say, Gone Tomorrow is a fun book for them to adapt. Like my favourite in the series, The Hard Way, it has a narrative predicated on Reacher making mistake after mistake. Unlike The Hard Way's story, however, the underlying structure is a very implausible/ silly/ paranoid one, more convoluted than The Big Sleep and less progressive than your average episode of 24. (There are mild spoilers that follow so if you don't recall the plot of the book or haven't seen the season yet, skip the rest of this paragraph?). It manages to dodge accusations of Islamophobia simply because most people in its viewing audience likely don't realize that Indonesia is predominantly Muslim. It even manages to have a suicide-bombing scene in it without ever once getting explicit about its character's background or motivation; religion is briefly hinted at but even then obliquely. (Did the book also sanitize this element so heavily?). The conspiracy at the heart of both the novel and the season ultimately proves so bloody idiotic and chance-dependent that the mind reels, with each new surprise forcing you to revise your interpretations of what has gone before until you no longer trust the narrators at all. Also, if we delve into the actual political subtext of things, this particular season is about as progressive and nuanced as your average Charles Bronson film. Even the most dubious characters, the ones who seem the most likely villains, from a liberal POV, will prove to be heroes after all... if they are white men. (Brown women don't fare so well). Cops, politicians... however corrupt they may seem early on, almost all of them get redeemed (and if not, Reacher kills them flat out).

That said, the action sequences are among the most gripping I've seen (especially episode V). It's by far the best-made of the four seasons that are out there. In lieu of going out, we binged three episodes last night and now have to wait six days for the final one to air on Prime on the 18th.  

Speaking of COVID, I do also have friends who talk about "the Great Reset" and all that, and they have a point, too: due to fear of spreading the virus, we eschewed going out and being social and community-oriented and instead stayed safely indoors watching a show on fuckin' Amazon Prime, of all places. That's not a great future for humanity, you know? (You imagine a THX-1138-style broadcast instructing people to not go out, but to "stay home and interact with your devices"). Those fascist evildoers at the base of COVID conspiracy theories couldn't have wished for a better outcome...

...and speaking of which, here's the new Doug Andrew song that I mentioned, which Doug sent to me this morning by way of accepting my apology that I didn't make the show. Doug tells me it was a great night! 

Doug Andrew, Tony Walker, Graham Brown and more this weekend...

Tony by me!

Okay, so it's a bit arbitrary to pick this Friday to write a story about Vancouver music scene veterans playing at LanaLou's, I do admit. Like, which nights DON'T have Vancouver music scene veterans playing there? But ya figure that the point of a piece like the one I just did for the Straight is to turn people on to the show that aren't already in the know, right? Who haven't seen Doug, Tony, or Graham before, don't know who they are or why they matter. 

So that's the angle -- a soft introduction to people who, if you've been paying attention to the local scene, don't really need it. But not everyone does that! 

The Circus in Flames by Gord McCaw

I have not, as I acknowledge, done justice to Graham Brown, there or elsewhere, and someday I will, but not today; hell, not only do I not have any past pics I can run of him, I can't even find a photo I can download on his website. (I woulda done this one but you right click and downloading isn't an option!). 

I'll have a bit more to come on the Straight website this week, about Stick Men on Sunday at the Rickshaw and the Butthole Surfers documentary on Monday. If anyone isn't aware, if you find an article that I've written there and click my name, you'll get a whole list of what I've been doing. It's been a busy year! I do plan to slow down again, but I also really wanted to do this piece, so... there it is. Seeya at LanaLou's!