Lanalou's Friday: Danny Shmanny rides again! Plus Huskee Dude, Sex Beat, and more

I kinda always feel like I'm in the right place when I notice Zippy Pinhead in the crowd, you know?

At Lanalou's on Friday, I missed Ed Hurrell's new band, Ragged Souls, but I got to chat with his non-sober self for a bit. Some day I will actually hear him play live - that I know of, I have not, yet. I also got to meet former No Fun cassette cover-artist Argh!!, whom I know off Facebook under a different alias; he seemed a super-nice guy. I always liked Argh!!'s drawings, so meeting him was really cool (I apologize for the teenagenish of my adjectives here but I had an enjoyable, sociable, hey-these-are-my-people kinda night and have nothing very insightful to say about it... it was cool, awesome, rad, choice, killer; it rocked, it was fun, a good time was had by all).

Tim Chan (of 64 Funnycars and China Syndrome) was playing guitar for Sex Beat, the night's Gun Club tribute band, who were the first band I saw (no photos of it that I took were really worth much, I'm afraid). Though it was Chan's first time playing with them - and may be the last, since Darryl Stapleton of Full Leather Jacket, their Jeffrey Lee Pierce, is moving to San Francisco for awhile - Tim really cooked, and their jammy, crunchy version of "Run Through the Jungle" was pretty special. Enjoyed bullshitting with him a bit, too - he seems like a great guy, and I really like that China Syndrome album; fans of Big-Star-esque power pop should check it out.

Hüskee Düdes - or a solo version of said project, made up of the man (not the band) Gnash Rambler, a man of many aliases - was very, um, cool, too. To be truthful, I had never realized quite how great his voice is until seeing him sing over acoustic guitar. Gnash showed his devotion to the Hüsker Dü catalogue by playing a very large sampling of songs from those Dü albums many of us prefer to ignore (everything after New Day Rising, in my case - I'm not even wild about that album!). I actually enjoyed hearing him do songs like "Flexible Flyer" and "Dead Set on Destruction," though the high point was probably a rather intense version of "I Will Never Forgive You" that had all the emotional violence and guitar craft of the Zen Arcade original but in a solo acoustic setting, which was so incongruous and jarring that it almost started to seem satirical. I don't think it was, but it would have been fine with me - it was great either way (speaking of No Fun, it kinda reminded me of seeing David M. doing solo acoustic renditions of the Residents "Santa Dog" during his No Fun at Christmas shows). I'd go see Hüskee Düde(s) again over either Bob Mould or Grant Hart, I think, and not just because Hüskee Düde shows are a lot kinder on the pockebook. I'm much more enamoured of sincere rock fandom than sincerely big weird rockstar egos, which is what seeing Grant Hart a few years ago brought to mind... and I'm no fan of later Bob Mould, so...

Then came a short delay. Darryl Stapleton, back on stage for Bones in the Hallway, joked, while calling Danny "Shmanny" Nowak to take the stage, that Danny "hasn't done this since 1982" - actually more like 1991, unless you count that Stranglers songs he sang at his 50th birthday bash - "so he's probably curled in a foetal position in the bathroom vomiting" (or words to that effect). Gnash, who had taken up the bass for this set, joked that they were going to be doing Teenage Head, "no wait, Teenage Rebels, or... no, right: Forgotten Head." Eventually Danny got up there and - after a somewhat stiff (but very appropriate) rendering of "Hello Hello," slid right back into the groove of being a stellar punk frontman; he even still fit into his old clothes, it seemed. One can only hope that a full Spores reunion is just around the corner. None of my photos were really that great... I got all the songs on video but they're hell to upload. Maybe I will do something with them at a later date? Meantime:

I didn't really stick around for Wett Stilettos, the closing act, but I did snap one or two okay photos of them on the way out the door. Cute costume on the singer, but I was done for the night; I still had to make it back to Burnaby, where I was crashing... If I lived in Vancouver, I would go to Lanalou's for nights like this every chance I got. Great fun. (Cool, awesome, gee wow, choice). Thanks to all for putting it on!