The Dwarves vs. Blag Dahlia Acoustic, with Sgt Saltpeter, Ty Stranglehold, Philly Roach and more

Dwarves (Mike, Blag, Sgt. Saltpeter visible). Plus that's Ty Stranglehold in the audience with glasses and hair (as opposed to the guy with glasses and no hair!). 

All photos this time out by Allan MacInnis, but Bob Hanham has better ones!

Quite the weekend! 

Potbelly's singer sounded enough like Jello Biafra that, hearing them being piped in live (I presume) at the merch area, a friend of mine asked, "Is this the Dead Kennedys?" I'd been having similar thoughts, but more like, "Is this a Jello project I don't know? Tumor Circus, maybe?" ...because I know my Kennedys, and knew it wasn't them. I had been impressed by their stage presence and fierceness of playing -- but had wandered merchwise, because I had not perused the merch well enough at that point (there was a LOT of it) and, y'know, I've seen a lot of punk rock at this point; I'm a jaded old guy who mostly listens to reggae and prog these days, so what do you expect? 

Merch area! 

Weirdly, hearing the music in the merch area and discovering from Ty Stranglehold that it was, in fact, still Potbelly that I was hearing made me go back and appreciate them more. Real good band, and as a fat occasional pot user, I must say: great name!    

Bob (the photographer on the right) shoots Potbelly

Stranglehold's band Knife Manual -- see the interview here -- was up next, and seeing them raised an interesting question: What is Ty looking at when he sings? He's got the most thousand-yard-stare of any singer I've seen, a weirdly nonspecific glare (might have something to do with not having his glasses on?). The band were as tight and fast as you'd expect, and did a Big Boys cover that I got wrong on Facebook ("We're Not in it to Lose": I am a Fat Elvis man, myself, and it was definitely a Skinny Elvis song, as is much else on the Big Boys tribute that Ty curated) and a Dicks cover ("Dicks Hate the Police," with what sounded like slightly modified lyrics). I caught a clip of a couple songs on vid. Great to see them, got my 7" signed. I think my favourite original of theirs is "Back in the Cellar," which has a real catchy chorus; I'm also partial to songs about cellars and basements, having had a nightmare once where I was the janitor of a haunted church (or something) where one of my jobs was to do a sort "routine maintenance exorcism" of a room downstairs that housed a great evil. I hated that part of my job, so seldom went down there, which meant the evil kept growing bigger, more powerful, until one day I was standing outside the door of the room and there was like this glowing light out the bottom and a strange humming sound from within and I knew I had fucked up bigtime. Rooms with "evil in the basement" (The Babadook, say) have always resonated with me (also, I used to teach in a basement, and going down in the elevator would often find myself humming a certain Ramones song). Catchy song, in any case. And I want to sit down with the lyrics for "Renovict Arnold," as well -- the first song in the vid -- which seems to be about gentrification in Victoria and its impact on the scene, but the words are not online. Is there a lyric sheet in the 7"? I should check. 

I got no decent photos of Knife Manual. Talk to Bob! I did get a fun shot of Stranglehold's Team Shitty vest, however. 

ATD ("A Total Disappointment") were really tight and fast too. They're a band I don't know as well as I might, since I've apparently seen them a few times now (!). The singer sports a jaunty moustache that reminded me of Gavin MacInnes who, whatever else may be said about him, does have a good moustache; perhaps this is why the guitarist wears a Fuck the Proud Boys t-shirt? The band did a cover of the Rebel Spell's "4:30 AM," which they had done on the Rebels Sing compilation. Again, very tight, fast, proficient, a great band, really, but like I say, I've seen a lot of punk rock at this point... old, jaded, craving complexity... King Crimson, Zappa, maybe even some Talking Heads... there is not much of Adrian Belew in this band. Which is fine, but that's where my listening tends these days. 

Then came the Dwarves. Vid caught of some vintage stuff -- that's OG member Sgt. Saltpeter on bass -- he's the fellow on the back cover of Blood, Guts and Pussy -- and new guy Mike on guitar, and a drummer whose name I did not get. Blag seems altogether too relaxed onstage for the kind of music the Dwarves play; even a half-nude streaker stage diving into the audience didn't faze him (not sure what would, really -- I think he'd grin and raise his eyebrows at all manner of debauchery and depravity, but, like, he's met GG Allin, so...). 

And speaking of male (near-)nudity, a bit later, a HeWho who was not The HeWho joined them onstage in costume, swirling his silk around until he exposed himself proudly and Blag tickled his pouch, of which I got some photos (Bob was sidelined at that point, having been invited to shoot from the wings, which means that I got an angle he missed).

Fun as all this was, none of this was as fun as the next day at LanaLou's, where the Campfire Shitkickers' lead singer Philly Roach (whose tattoos bore a striking similarity to the previous night's HeWho's) did a short acoustic opening set that included SNFU's song about bulimia ("You Make Me Thick," the first song of his I caught video of) and a cover of Warren Zevon's "Carmelita" which was rewritten so that the main character/ narrator is basically Mr. Chi Pig. There's an official video for that, though one lyric gets changed and only broken out, Philly explained later, for live performances; I won't tell you which, however, because Philly omitted it from the recording for a reason, lest it someday be misunderstood as a slag on a friend of Chi's. Entertainingly, it involves the line about selling what has variably been represented as a Smith Corona (in Zevon's original recording) and as a Smith and Wesson in the Linda Ronstadt and GG Allin versions, in all cases being done as a precursor to scoring drugs. How many variants on a single lyric can you have?

But Philly's is my new favourite, and that moment in particular, and that song as a whole, ended up the most delightful and probably the most memorable bit of the whole weekend. And Blag hadn't even started his Ralph Champagne set yet!

Philly! What the fuck is Glizzy, by the way? 

I dearly hope that we will get another chance to see a Ralph Champagne concert in Vancouver, even moreso because I missed out on getting the LP (I'd only scraped up enough cash for The Dwarves Are Young and Good-Looking, which happily was on their merch table; it's become a bit hard to find otherwise). Blag's set was brilliant and funny and rude and chatty and low-key, everything you could hope for. Blag invited us to request Dwarves songs ("I can play some of them!") but didn't know the one I shouted out for, "I Masturbate Me" ("that's a Josh Freese song, though the words are mine, of course. He gave me this surf instrumental and I'm like, 'What am I gonna do with this?'"). Blag also couldn't play "Contraband," which a few people wanted to hear -- my favourite off the Ralph Champagne album that I've heard, though "Lolita Goodbye" is pretty special, too. Probably the funniest song he did was also the most politically incorrect, a tune called "This Jihad," which was basically a country song from the point of view of a radical Islamist who gives up the Jihad because his girl has died. There was a very, very politically incorrect verse sung (again, only for live performance purposes; he must read the room carefully first) in an uber-faux-Arabic -- which I am SURE would piss a lot of people off, but in the convivial environment of LanaLou's, caused no more harm than making a few people spit out their drinks laughing. Blag's kind of fearless -- I guess he has faith in his own wit, which is considerable, as a device by which to extricate himself from bad situations. Does it ever not work? I think he could charm a rattlesnake; he certainly charmed me. 

Note: I am unclear on writing this whether the song "This Jihad" pre-dated the hacking of the Dwarves' website by jihadists (!) but you can read more about that here. 

Billy Hopeless was at the table, too, and stoked on the upcoming Black Halos show. I might do something more on that later, so I'm holding stuff back, but it was fun that Blag knew Billy and mentioned him a couple of times in his set. He's even namechecked in the video I shot. 

It was fun being at the cool kids' table for a change -- Blag and Billy both sat with us, as did Bob Hanham and newly-tonsured Cat Ashbee, who probably has great shots, too. It was funny, as soon as I suggested to Blag that we get a photo with Billy, suddenly all three of us were snapping shots. The above is mine... 

Two terrific days for me -- glad I got to see the Dwarves again. I think, in fact, I've now seen the Dwarves enough times (this was my third), but if Blag ever comes up for an acoustic show again, I am there. Maybe I'm showing my age? 

I still whooped like a teenager for "I Will Deny," though. May that never change! 

A Ty Stranglehold Interview on Knife Manual, Angry Snowmans, Silly Killers and the Dwarves: "You've got to temper the serious with the absurd"

NOTE: MORE TICKETS HAVE BEEN ADDED to the Dwarves show, and there will be tickets at the door. (It was "sold out" when I wrote this but now it ain't).

I have seen the Dwarves twice, which is one more time than I've seen a performance by Victoria's Ty Stranglehold (who will be fronting Knife Manual when they open for the Dwarves on December 7th, but who is also the singer of the Angry Snowmans and formerly of the Hoosegow; he will be the subject of the actual interview, below, but first I must do justice to the Dwarves). 

My first Dwarves experience was circa the Blood Guts & Pussy album, in the early 1990s. The band played Vancouver's Cruel Elephant (the Granville location, if that means something to you: there were a few incarnations of that venue). Singer Blag Dahlia had long hair hiding his face and closed the set by kicking glasses and bottles into the audience, while guitarist HeWhoCannotBeNamed was naked except for boots and an bag over his head. The band played for only about fifteen or twenty minutes, but that might have involved fifteen or twenty songs, with their fiercest tunes, like "Fuck You Up and Get High," clocking in at around 40 seconds. It was terrifying, memorable, and completely satisfying -- perfect for its violent concision -- though I'm glad I wasn't sitting close enough to get hit with broken glass. Note to self: if you get up close to the Dwarves, you do so at your own risk. 

(Note: that's a 2012 gig poster)

The band was nothing like that when they played Fortune Sound Club, the next time I saw them, some 20 years later. HeWho was either absent or clothed. Blag had short hair. They played a fullsome set of much longer, poppier punk -- my favourite song on the album they were touring, 2011's The Dwarves Are Born Again, is "I Masturbate Me" -- which was particularly relevant, in that I also am a "Catholic escapee," as the rhyme goes, but not especially frightening (note: somewhere I have a tape where I talk with Blag about jerking off, apropos of that song, but I'm not going to rush to transcribe it. He also talks about being somewhat disappointed to discover that all the girls backstage at a Motorhead event were hired local strippers, some of whom he knew, uh, well. He presents as a shamelessly good-natured reprobate -- a reprobate with standards -- and will be doing a solo acoustic event the next day at LanaLou's. I think Ralph Champagne is actually his alias for that project; see here for a taste, and here for the event page).  

Dwarves by James Farrell, Blag top left

Alas, thinking things were safer now, that night at the Fortune Sound Club some dozen years or so ago, I made the mistake of getting right up front, not realizing that Blag (who has enormous feet; we'd actually talked in the interview about how both he and Tesco Vee of the Meatmen had, like, size fifteen shoes) would spend much of the night diving into the pit, which more than once involved my getting kicked about the head and face -- not deliberately, not particularly painfully, but when you're right up front and the singer leaps over your head to ride the wave, a size fifteen shoe is hard to fucking avoid, you know? Note to self #2: if you get up close to the Dwarves, you do so at your own risk. 

I guess I'm less likely to get kicked in the head at the acoustic gig, eh?

I have not yet seen Knife Manual, the new band of Ty Stranglehold -- opening for the Dwarves at the Waldorf on December 7th -- but odds are, if you're a Vancouverite, you haven't either, as they've never played Vancouver before! Stranglehold's other band, Angry Snowmans, has, and marked my first encounter with Stranglehold as a frontman last year, though I'd previously interacted with him in journalistic and punk fan capacities and had other points of intersection. We are both thanked in the liner notes for the Subhumans' Death Was Too Kind, which was a very nice thing of the Subhumans to have done (and speaks more for how considerate Subhumans Canada were than the contributions of either myself or Stranglehold).

And somewhere out there is a signed Chris Walter novel (maybe Welfare Wednesday, which I accidentally sold, thinking the inscription was in Shouts From the Gutter) where Walter, who had been interviewed by both Stranglehold and myself, began his inscription to me, "To Ty." The conversation that ensued involved my saying something like, "What the fuck, Chris, I'm Allan MacInnis -- that's Ty Stranglehold over there" (pointing across the Cobalt), whereupon Chris said something like "Fuck!" and moved to throw the book aside and do another one, whereupon I said, "No, it's okay, just cross it out and fix it, I want a record of this!" (I meant to keep it as evidence of the fuckup, so if you have that copy of the book, I'll buy it back off you!!!). 

Anyhow, the Angry Snowmans -- who rewrite punk classics to have Yuletide themes, like taking D.I.'s "Richard Hung Himself" and turning it into "Richard Hung his Sock," or the Minutemen's "Bob Dylan Wrote Propaganda Songs," and revising it to be "Bing Crosby Wrote Festive Christmas Songs" -- are delightful (you can see them again in Victoria on December 20th, but it's sold out online, so good luck; you could even conceivably see both that show and NO FUN at Christmas on the same weekend; Stranglehold and M. are kindred spirits in their attitude to the holiday season).

Angry Snowmans by Bob Hanham

NO FUN at Christmas by Allan MacInnis

This is by far not all Ty has done: recently, Stranglehold also curated a must-get comp of covers of Texas funk/ punk Big Boys, with written input from the late Gary Floyd (friend of Big Boys' vocalist Biscuit), which you can find online, buy vinyl of on the cheap at Ditch Records, and maybe even get on the merch table.  

But when Stranglehold and I met at a Victoria coffee shop to swap Mamas, this past August,  our conversation mostly focused on Knife Manual. The Dwarves gig had only just been arranged. That show is now sold out, as far as I know; no word if there are tickets to be had at the door. But we'll surely see Knife Manual this way again, and you'll be well prepared! 

We take you now to a Victoria coffee shop around the corner from Ditch Records... 

Knife Manual L-to-R: Tyrone (guitar), Jeff (bass), Donnie (drums), Ty (vocals), Rayce (guitar) 

A: So why the name Knife Manual? 

T: Well, the name is based on a song title from a band in Seattle in the late 70s/ early 80s called the Silly Killers. They were one of the Seattle punk bands; I think Duff from Guns 'n Roses played with them [he did!]. And the funny thing was, I didn't know it was a Silly Killers song for many years, because the band Gas Huffer covered it on a split 7" with Mudhoney. And Mudhoney covered the Angry Samoans [the band from whom Angry Snowmans derive their name, if anyone is unclear on that point!]. I didn't realize at the time it was a cover; I was going, "This is like, my favourite Gas Huffer song ever!" And years later, I found it it wasn't their song, and I heard the original, and went, 'Oh, this band is pretty cool,' y'know?" 

T (continued): And it always stuck out in my head that that would be a really great band name. And I popped it onto my list. I think a lot of people in bands in the digital age have a running list on their phone of potential band names; I know I do, and a lot my friends do. And Knife Manual shot to the top of the list. And then in 2019, when I was looking to start a non-Christmas themed band again -- it had been awhile! -- a few friends of mine were practicing, and they were like, "Hey, do you want to come down and maybe sing or something?" "Cool! Can we call it Knife Manual?" "Yeah, we can." And I had already drawn a logo in my head. And that became our logo...

A: What's the original song about? 

T: It's kind of funny -- which is, I've always thought, an important staple of punk music: there's got to be a level of humour in it. But the guy's lamenting, how does he have any hope of being able to kill anyone if he doesn't have the manual to his knife, basically -- that's a line in the song, "How can I hope to kill without it?" It's stupid but yet hilarious, to me, and stupid and hilarious are two of my tenets, when it comes to punk music. 

A: Did you have contact with anyone in Silly Killers?

T: In a roundabout way. I've got a few friends who are older, Seattle-crowd-type people, and a friend of a friend of mine did play with them, and I think he was involved with Gas Huffer in some way, which is maybe why they covered it at that point. So I'd given my friend in Seattle a Knife Manual patch, and he'd put a photo of it on his social media, and the guy -- he was either in Silly Killers, or associated with Silly  Killers -- was like, "How do you even get one of those?" And I quickly messaged him: "I'll get you one," and sent an extra down to my friend: "Make sure he gets this," y'know? And they were laughing -- I don't know what they assume, but everybody knows exactly where the name came from. 

A: So a confession: I've only ever seen you with Angry Snowmans, so I don't know what the Hoosegow sounded like. I don't know what Knife Manual sounds like! [We were meeting to swap t-shirts and taking advantage of the moment, but I hadn't done homework]. Is there a sonic consistency between bands?

T: A little bit! I guess the consistency for me is lyrically, because that's me being the frontman/ lyricist in both those bands, and obviously the Angry Snowmans too, but obviously we're doing other people's songs in that one, just changing the lyrics, so it's a different style -- though again, "stupidity and humour" is key. I guess musically it's a little bit different. I think with Hoosegow there was a little more of a rock'n roll element to it, an old-school 80's skate-punk kind of element to it. There's a little bit of that in Knife Manual, but Knife Manual leans more into hardcore territory. Like, I kinda go by what people liken us to after they see us play. I often get Poison Idea and Millions of Dead Cops, and a lot of that is maybe vocally, my voice sounds like Dave Dictor or Jerry A, a bit -- we have the same sort of cadence? [I was thinking Stranglehold reminded me of Articles of Faith vocalist Vic Bondi, but I can hear what he means]. Musically, I think we lean into Poison Idea territory. And MDC too, which is good company to keep, as far as I'm concerned. And lyrically, I think with Knife Manual I do touch on a bit more serious topics, but in a humorous way.

Knife Manual by Bob Hanham

A: Like what?

T: I've got a lot of songs dealing with mental health issues. I've been personally, not just through the pandemic but leading up to it as well, really trying to address my anxieties and depressions and learning a bit more about that, and realizing it's not a unique situation. A lot of us here deal with this type of stuff. And I've been kinda vocalizing that a little bit. It's not like an After School Special kind of thing, but it's like -- "Does anyone else lie in bed in the middle of the night, staring at the ceiling and go, "Why is my life so fucked up?" I think a lot of us do, but then we turn around and kind of make a joke about it. We have a song called, "Midnight Anxiety," and whenever I introduce that song, Rayce, the guitar player, is like, "Everyone look under your seat, there's Ativan for everyone!"

But yeah, it's sort of that shared, aging-punk-rock, "we're getting old and we've got issues." And the world's got a lot of issues that aren't being resolved, that keep me awake at night, whether it be the world heating up beyond repair or the fact that Nazis exist still. That kind of stuff really bothers me! So I've taken to singing about it and making dark humour about it...

Knife Manual by Bob Hanham

A: Give me some song titles? What do you do, in terms of the more political stuff?

T: We've got "I Hate Those Guys," with the full title in brackets being "(Nazis) I Hate Those Guys." I kinda stole that from Raiders of the Lost Ark. And it's basically asking, "Why are we even having this in 2024? Everyone can agree that they're bad." But [some people are like], "Well, everybody's got their own point of view." "No! No! That's bullshit!"

Then there's "Bad Timeline," which asks "Where did our society go wrong?" I talk about this a lot, and it also ties into the fact that we also cover a Devo song, which is kind of weird for a scrappy little hardcore band, to play a Devo song, but a lot of the lyrics I've been writing are about devolution, that theory. It's like, humanity kind of peaked and is starting to come around to, like, devolve. I really can see it happening now, every day, every time I look at the news or whatever: We're going backwards somehow again, everyone is backpedalling... that's the kind of stuff I find lives in my head when writing songs. How do you deal with trauma? Or, as an adult, how do you reconcile with your childhood traumas? Can you do anything for it? I deal with it by writing angry hardcore songs! Yelling is therapy, in a way. But then we'll turn around and write a song about hitting the cheese pump at 7-11 and just drowning your Nachos. Which was a running joke on our little tour this summer, about hittin' the cheese pump. And inevitably it ended up with us going to 7-11 after a show and just loading up on plastic 7-11 cheese. And then we're like, "We have to write this song." And we're gonna, because you've got to temper the serious with the absurd. 

Knife Manual by Bob Hanham

A: What Devo song do you do?

T: "Mr. DNA." [Starts at about the 3:50 mark here]

A: Not one I know! Early Devo?

T: It's from their second or third album, I think. They do it as two songs together. "Smart Patrol" goes into "Mr. DNA," and "Mr. DNA" is the fast one, so we didn't do the big, long intro, we just go 1-2-3-4 and we're into it. It's just like all those songs thematically: the human race needs to be saved from itself, kind of thing. It just kinds of fits in. 

A: Any Dwarves stories? Ever play with them?

T: I've never played with the Dwarves. I've seen them a number of times. They've been a band that -- I don't want to say an inspiration, but they're a band I've always liked because they're polarizing. It's like, they take their shtick and they stand by it. And I can appreciate a good shtick! I dress up like Santa and play Christmas punk songs in the winter. And the Hoosegow had a running theme where we all wore jail stripes for a period of time. I'm always down for a shtick. And the Dwarves shtick of being repulsive and disgusting but writing the catchiest songs that will stick in your head...

...It's funny, because my wife and I... they don't have a huge female fan base, but my wife's like, "I hate that I love this band so much! These songs are so catchy..." And you catch yourself singing them out loud sometimes -- it's like, "ooh." I'm excited to play a show with them. 

A: Did Angry Snowmans ever interpret a Dwarves song?

T: No*, mainly because with Angry Snowmans, we set ourselves a limit on the years we would work within. Technically we could probably start moving that forward, now that we've been doing it for so damn long, but before it was like, a "We're not going past 1986" kind of thing. It has been suggested that we bump that up into the 1990s, but then, I'm like, people will be like, "Why don't you do, like, NOFX or Bad Religion?"(Laughs). Actually, that's not true, we do a Bad Religion song, but it's from the 80s, though! I shouldn't use them as a reference.

A: Which Bad Religion song? 

T: "We're Only Gonna Die" The full title is, "We're Only Gonna Die (From Our Own Arrogance), and our version is, "We're Only Gonna Buy (From Our Own Christmas List.

A: I only know Suffer. 

T: This is from before that, from How Can Hell Be Any Worse. Which... I also stole that album cover once for a poster for Angry Snowmans and changed it to, How Can Whoville Be Any Worse.

Angry Snowmans 2023 by Allan MacInnis

A: So who is in Knife Manual? Is there any overlap between Knife Manual and Angry Snowmans? 

T: Yeah, actually, Rayce Shitty plays guitar in Angry Snowmans. He only joined like, three years ago, so he was technically in Knife Manual before he was in Snowmans. And also Donnie our drummer in Knife Manual has filled in for Snowmans I think for two seasons. And that's it as far as the crossover. And then we've got Tyrone. We're all members of Team Shitty, which is kind of like the Jaks team, but not; we suck at skateboarding, but we love it anyway. Tyrone plays guitar. He's played in crusty hardcore bands, he's played in acoustic folk-punky things he's done here... our bass player Dan just left; we're in the process of replacing Dan, but we've got a good friend of ours, also a former Snowman, Jeff, who is going to fill in for the show in December.   

A: Let me ask you a question about Team Shitty. I know nothing about skateboarding, but I've seen a punk band opening for Nomeansno and the Hanson Brothers called the Shittys. I think the guy's name is pronounced "Bouj-ee" (Craig Bougie). 

T: Bou-jay? 

A: The guy who did sound for Nomeansno. Was there an overlap with Team Shitty?

T: No!

A: Aha. Everytime I see "Team Shitty," I wonder, is that connected to the Shittys? 

T: Yeah, I've been asked before. I've seen them play, but it has nothing to do with the team! 

*TY STRANGLEHOLD POST-SCRIPT: "Since we spoke last, I started working on lyrics for a Snowmans version of a Dwarves song (for next year). Drugstore is turning into North Pole!" (He also says he has contemplated changing "Fuck 'Em All" to "Deck the Halls.") 

Dwarves and Knife Manual (and ATD and Potbelly) play the Waldorf  Dec. 7. Ticket info here. Not sure when they stop selling them online but there were tickets added. Angry Snowmans play Victoria Dec. 20. Again, not sure what good it will do you (sold out online) but event info is here. Good luck gettin' in!

On Not Being Stephen Hamm, plus last night's Pointed Sticks show

Stephen Hamm Theremin Man, taking it to the next level with the Space Family Band at the Rickshaw, Nov. 30, 2024, by Allan MacInnis

A skinny man in a black hoodie corrals me by the Rickshaw entrance. I do not know him, but gamely pause as he points at himself and commences unzipping the hoodie to reveal... his Stephen Hamm Theremin Man t-shirt. It takes me a second to figure out why he is doing this, then I shake my head and say, "I ain't him." 

If I keep my inclination to overestimate in check, this is only maybe the fifth time that someone has mistaken me for Stephen Hamm since the inception of the Theremin Man project, but that's four more times than I've been mistaken for Geoff Barton, Alex Varty, or Ty Stranglehold. I grant that we are both, as Hamm would say, "big-boned"; that we both have rather high foreheads (extending all the way to the back of our heads, in fact) and whitish goatees; and that we are both of a certain age. Hamm also has a moustache, however; stands at least eight inches taller than I do; favours ceremonial robes and eye makeup to my Hawaiian shirts, rock tees, and black slacks; and most importantly, HE'S STEPHEN MOTHERFUCKING HAMM, people, GET IT RIGHT. He was in Slow when I was merely a guy in the audience, for fucksake (to say nothing of Tankhog, the Evaporators, Sunday Morning, and even a version of the Enigmas I saw). He should cut a distinct figure! 

Please study the photos carefully, you Theremin Man fans. That's me on the left in the top pic, me on the right on the bottom. The guy onstage, playing an instrument: THAT'S HAMM. (And while we're at it, what's with the people who were calling out, "Hey, Steve!" last night? Another distinction: you can "Al" me all you want, I do not mind it, but Hamm apparently does not care for the short form of his name, correcting someone from the stage at one point last night, responding to a "Hey, Steve" with a dour mutter of, "Stephen." And yet still calls of "Hey, Steve!" persisted. Why?). 

Without wanting to steal his thunder, my blogless gig buddy Adam Kates -- pictured below with Bev Davies at our late night, post-gig vegetarian Indian dinner at India House, at Pender on Main, who are open til midnight on weekends and have far better  food than you would expect (Rickshaw attendees take heed!) -- enthusiastically came up with a great idea, based on Hamm's debut Space Family Band performance last night: Hamm should put his band on TV. I do not know my TV (Adam suggested Jimmy Kimmell or SNL), but this is actually a fabulous idea; Bev seemed to agree. I think the Space Family Band would present really, really well on television. 

There was even a bit of a theatricality to the performance, beyond the costumes and gold lame suit, when a shaggy creature, looking somewhat like an ambulatory sphagnum bog, joined the band onstage to dance between songs, shuffling low to the ground, hugging the legs of the musicians, staring out at the audience with eyes we could not see, and one time bonking its head into the bass (vision must be limited in such a getup). This was during "Star People."   

Hamm was only one of the acts last night, but he was the only act displaying a momentous onstage evolution, as we've never seen Hamm play with a full band before. I don't know if they were actually all family members, but the Space Family Band is a very welcome addition to Hamm's performances. There were also people wandering the audience wearing muumuus, robes, and other odd costumes that I presume were there as Hamm enthusiasts/ supporters. I enjoyed it enough that at the end of the evening, I bought a new Theremin Man shirt design, despite the fact that me wearing a Theremin Man t-shirt will likely only increase the incidences of being taken for him. But think about it, folks: if I were Stephen Hamm, how would I have taken these photographs? 

The rest of the night was equally fabulous, of course. Going to a Pointed Sticks show in Vancouver is like going to a high school reunion of people you actually like.  In attendance were Rd Cane, Cat Ashbee, Dave Jacklin, Dale and Jade from the Dishrags, Grant McDonagh, Dale Wiese, Richard Chapman, Regina Michaelis, Kristina Mamelli, Ed Hurrell, Sonny Dean (in some sort of tux???!), and to Bev's amazement, Bud Luxford himself (who I last ran into at that garage-door Pointed Sticks show in East Van, but whom she has not seen for some 30 years, I think she said). No doubt there were other notables I did not myself notice (or have already forgotten saying hi to!), but the vibe was as happy and pro-social as it's been at any concert I've attended. Nick commented at one point that in Germany, there was no need to talk about "new songs" versus "old songs," as it was all new to most members of the audience over there, but the band played a surprising number of the old ones last night, including an encore of "The Marching Song" and "Out of Luck," which I missed (I was out sorting stuff out in the lobby -- I'd brought gifts for people, things to get signed, and briefly thought, worst of all, that I'd lost my hat, which had a newly purchased TAD Jack Pepsi pin in it, and a Forgotten Rebels pin gifted me by Adam). 

But I was happy to catch "True Love" and a cover, apropos of Paul Leahy's birthday today, of Polly's "Put a Little English On It," which I leapt from my seat to film for David M. (my first video of the opening two songs is much better). It all sounded great; the Sticks had just returned from a 16-date/ 16-gig sprint across Europe, which, as Nick also quipped, must be some sort of record, if you multiply those figures by the combined age of the members of the Pointed Sticks or something ("I don't know, that's math"). Bill Hemy in particular continues to really knock it out of the park on guitar, in particular. I didn't really understand Ian's drumming for "There's the Door," but recall that I didn't understand it last time I saw them live, either... and now that I re-listen to the studio version, it also seems strange to me (but a bit quieter), like he's a beat ahead of the song, or something... so it's not badly played, just a weird drum part! It's still probably my favourite song on the new album. 

The opening acts were fun, too. Victoria's Peanut Butter Telephone at times channeled the same shoegaze-meets-Sonic Youthfulness I saw exemplified by Cherry Pick a few weeks ago (they'd do very well on a bill together), but also brought a lot of 60s psychedelia to the plate, which grew increasingly potent and present as their set continued; for guys in their 20s, they must have killer record collections (or really cool parents, or something). The Get Arounds (featuring Michael Nathanson, on drums -- he's the member I'd seen most often elsewhere) were more of a "1975 power pop" thing, muscular and tight, but though the guitarist's shades reminded me a bit of Rick Brewster from the Angels (my favourite power pop/ pub rock band of that era) and some of their muscular riffage reminded me of the tougher end of Goddo, another great, under-appreciated band from back then, I had people to say hi to, business to take care of, and a couple trips up to the washroom to make. They didn't need me, anyhow, with someone like Eddy Dutchman in their corner as MC (under his momentary alias of "Mr. Rick Shaw," he'd worked out a bit of stage patter about how you shouldn't fuck around but buy a round for the Get Arounds). 

I remain exhausted, in general (and ill enough that I kind of regret having gone out at all, this weekend, to be honest; I thought maybe on Friday night my cold had passed quickly, but it seems to have resurfaced now). I have one more big piece to put out, then plan to go back to not writing for awhile. But it was such a fun night, I had to all tell you about it. Thanks to the Pointed Sticks for facilitating such a delightful party, and WELCOME HOME.