Subhumans Gig Friday at the Lamplighter!

I am very excited about this. The official (Vancouver) Subhumans site is here. The Subhumans myspace page here. Gerry Hannah's blog here! And y'all should buy the new album -- it's a good healthy dose of no-bullshit political punk ROCK that makes you feel like the 90's never happened, like punk never "broke" (as Sonic Youth put it). It's pretty much impossible for even the same guys to compete with the anthemic/iconic status of "Fuck You," "Firing Squad," and "Slave to my Dick," which are kinda untouchably UP there... but the album as a whole is more solid than Incorrect Thoughts, even (!!!) -- the overall quality of songwriting is higher and the lyrics make me remember the days when I used to SIT DOWN WITH THE LYRIC SHEETS to punk albums, to read along, song by song, which I almost never do anymore. Gerry has a ton of great songs on it, Mike Graham's "Celebrity" is an instant classic, and Brian's "People of the Plague" is the best song I've heard about homelessness: it's a totally a necessary comment on the situation in Vancouver (and can be heard on the Myspace page above). This is cause to be most excited...

By the way, diehard fans who are curious what the pictures of Gerry with little bits of flamin' paper are on his blog are advised to seek out Glen Sanford's documentary, Useless, which can be purchased -- at the moment only on VHS -- from the director directly at glenette (at) shaw.ca . It is short and quite impressionistic, but I really liked it -- will be working on getting a screening of it happening in Vancouver sometime; it's been a few years since it last played here, I believe...

In other news, Barbara Streisand apparently yelled at a heckler to "Shut the fuck up!" during a skit before a concert where she was mocking George W. Bush. It is the first and only time I have ever felt the remotest inkling of liking for Ms. Streisand, so cheers to her!