It's been a busy life lately. I tutor college students in English by day (some days), teach English to lower-level immigrants in the evening during the week, and higher-level immigrants during the early parts of Friday and Saturday. Since the locations I am at are geographically remote (two sites in Vancouver, two sites in Surrey, and me still living in-between in Burnaby), I end up commuting long hours. Since the immigrant-teaching job runs on a CLB/ PBLA model, I also have to spend a lot of the time when I am not at work planning - because there are no CLB textbooks; the government would rather spend its money on theory than practice, apparently, creating a complex model of teaching that comes complete with a 200+ page document, saying what approach you should take, but not going so far as to design a textbook, curriculum, or lesson plans, so all the actual practical, what-do-I-do-in-class-today work is outsourced to the teachers (thanks a bunch!). PBLA/ CLB also requires weekly testing of the students, but again, you gotta design (or at least find) those tests, then you have to mark them; the government model again tells you HOW to test them, but it no more tells you WHAT to test than it does what to teach. Lotta work, in short. At least the tutoring gig is zero prep, zero take-home.
Anyhow, with all of that, and daily life stuff like housework and very occasional writing gigs, I have very little downtime. Saturday evening and Sunday are my only real days off. Yesterday, Erika and I went to the Cloverdale Flea Market for a road trip, where I found a few LPs and CDs that fill some holes in my collection. It was a pleasant day, despite a rocky sleep the night before. My insecurities about identity that I'd been having while suffering from my kidney stone ordeal of the last few months have pleasantly faded, and I'm shoring up my sense of myself with stuff I love, listening to a lot of stuff from my teen years (like the Blue Oyster Cult, say), acquiring some fun vinyl items, and interacting a bit with the great John Terlesky (AKA Brother JT, of the vastly-underrated American rock band the Original Sins). I feel pretty good, actually, especially now that I'm not pissing flaming blood. Plus being busy is better than being idle; and it's nice having a little money to play with (I mean, I'm still living paycheque-to-paycheque, but I get to go "whee" a little for a few days after each arrives).
So if life is, all-in-all, fairly good, why did I have this creepy-ass dream last night?
In the dream, I am a mentally challenged person (perhaps inspired by my recent watching of Tropic Thunder, where one of the lead character's past acting roles is in a film called Simple Jack). I am in a strange town, where I have to wait for someone or for something to happen. It's a variant on my old recurring dream, I guess, but instead of being responsible for rescuing someone, I seem to be the one who is to be rescued. I am in some peril, but being a bit simple, I don't realize it. I'm staying in a hotel, while my rescue is orchestrated from without; my only company is a pet animal, some sort of strange ferret/ possum creature who (make of this what you will) rides around under my pants and sometimes peeks up and smiles at me from below. (Note that in the dream I am both the main character and, as myself, a member of an audience watching a movie about the character; I find the animal as adorable as anyone). I am not in a very good part of town, and someone seems to wish me ill, so it would be wisest - and I believe the person responsible for me, coming to rescue me, or such, tells me this over the phone - that I stay in my hotel room.
Of course, I go out. I forget why; I walk around a few stores, look at things in shop windows. There is a diverse and busy crowd on the sidewalks, paying no attention to me; there is one particularly menacing looking guy, but he is ignoring me. This changes when a woman - possibly a prostitute, trying to start a conversation - approaches me and says, "hey, do you want to listen to music with me?"
I brusquely indicate that I do not. She takes offense, and says to the menacing-looking guy, "That guy over there just insulted me. If you were a real man, you'd kick him!"
So he does; he comes over, and kicks me really hard, aiming at the crotch or the gut. Then he walks away. Except it is my animal, not me, that takes the blow. It looks up from my crotch, and at first seems to be fine, but - concerned - I pull it out, and its guts are hanging out, it is all bloody, it is in pain, and is obviously dying.
As the viewer of this story, in the audience, I am crushed. We all loved this friendly animal and its smile. We are crying. The main character of the movie - also myself, but I will shift to third person here, as my dream also does this, sort of - is on his knees on the sidewalk, cradling his dying animal friend, as people gather round, observing. Then my character places his hand on the animals head and - this is heartbreaking to watch - he takes out a knife and stabs into the head - putting it out of its misery, we in the audience assume.
Except not exactly: he continues to cut a generous chunk of the animal's head away, including the left eye, and then pops this rather large piece into his mouth and begins to chew. Suddenly the audience has gone from crying to gagging; and though I am mostly watching this from without along with them, I am able to taste and feel this chunk of my friend in my mouth as I chew.
And then - as the kneeling man, the protagonist - I say, loudly, so everyone can hear: "Saves me breakfast!" And I grin around my "food."
I do not why I say this; maybe it is calculated to disgust and frighten, so people leave me alone. Maybe it is some twisted way of coping with grief. I am, in my role as an audience member, as grossed out as anyone by what I've done and said.
Maybe this is all informed by going off the vegetarian diet I was on for a bit? Erika and I did six months without meat last year, some of which was near vegan; but that has fallen away, something I am not so happy with, but am kind of having to accept at the moment.
Anyhow, that's when I wake up, unsettled, "saves me breakfast" echoing inside my head. ...And what will I make for breakfast for my wife and I, today?
In other news, I am presently taking some interest in the work of (academic/ clinical psychologist) Jordan Peterson. Peterson's ongoing ascendancy is an interesting phenomenon; there's suddenly a billion pundits out there - including an apparent (former?) friend of Peterson's - getting as much attention as they can from slagging him. Save from occasionally reading such articles, decrying his supposed cryptofascism, I had no idea who he was or actually thought, or if he was being fairly represented by his "ideological enemies," at least one of whom has made a very public ass of herself for willfully misinterpreting him. (If you haven't seen this clip, do so. With friends like Cathy Newman, feminists/ leftists don't NEED enemies, actually...). Save for some vague awareness that he was against Bill C-16, the only thing I knew about Peterson was that he was controversial. Eventually I got curious enough by the fuss - since, as a friend used to say, "no one kicks a dead dog" - to buy his new book, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote for Chaos.
...which I will talk about in a minute, but first, a bit more on C-16, however, in case you've missed some of the controversy. That bill - now either law or in the process of becoming law - adds transsexuals and people with non-normative gender expressions to groups protected from hate crimes, hate speech and so forth. It may be interpreted - and certainly this is where Peterson has gone with it - as mandating that people be required by law to call transpeople by their preferred pronouns, lest they be accused of hate speech/ a human rights violation. He has said he will not be compelled by law to do this - because having any politically-correct language mandated by law is frightening to Peterson, who has - I believe sincerely - pointed out the free speech implications of this, and drawn somewhat hyperbolic parallels to Maoism and Stalinism and such, essentially saying that Bill C-16 places us on the slippery slope to totalitarianism.
I think that's wrong, personally, believe - as do other commentators on the case - that his reaction to C-16 is a bit histrionic, and at the very least a good-faith misunderstanding of how human rights legislation works. It all looks - from my less-than-expert vantage - like just another example of a conservative chicken-little backlash to a fairly unthreatening and probably very positive progressive change in the law, akin to the old rage from some quarters against Sikhs wearing turbans in the RCMP or gays and lesbians being allowed to marry, both of which changes spawned ample slippery-slope speculation in their day. He may be smart and articulate, and his worries about politically correct speech and identity politics may be reasonable, but he's overreacting to C-16. I doubt that bill will ever lead to people who make a simple pronoun error - which is very easy to make, especially when you're being asked to refer to a single person as a "they" - being called up before a tribunal or such; human rights violations tend to require something more extreme than slipping up with a his/ her/ their/ zir - especially when given that that sort of error often has nothing much to do with transphobia but the ability to count. For something to classify as "hate speech" - which is what the bill is designed to protect the transgendered against - it has to be clearly deliberately motivated by bias and hate. As a human rights lawyer has explained it to me, context is very important. If someone calls me a "fag," for example, that MIGHT be hate speech, if it occurs during a random attack on the street - but it might not; even if it is meant hostilely, if the context is a heated argument or fight that has devolved into name-calling, the term is no more hate speech than someone calling me an "asshole" or such. It's not a human rights violation; it's just a fight. So if you slip up and call someone by the wrong pronoun, without meaning to, even if it embarrasses them, it surely won't be counted as "hate speech" unless there is some proof that it was ill-intentioned and not just a mistake. Any other implementation of the bill would be ridiculous and could never stand up in court. I mean - try conversing with someone for half an hour about Joshua Ferguson, born a man, transitioned to being a transwoman, and now identifying as neither male nor female, while appearing as the latter and having a name that suggests the former. Ferguson prefers to be a they or them, but if you can consistently call them "them" over the course of a natural conversation, and never revert to either "him" or "her," I applaud your conscious command of the language. It's beyond me to do this (though I am embarrassed that I revert to "him" when I slip; no doubt "they" would prefer "her," if I'm going to get it wrong).
All this does speak to the absence of (and need for) a gender-neutral single pronoun in English, but that also is a can of worms, since it will be (I think) a very long time before any one single gender-neutral pronoun is agreed upon and comes into common usage, even if it is legislated. I'd be all for a single gender-neutral pronoun if one should be settled on, but in the absence of a common practice, as Peterson has pointed out, having dozens of different variants to choose from makes requiring well-meaning people to use whichever one someone chooses simply untenable, ungainly, even idiotic. As my wife quipped: "So if I want to be called 'potato,' you have to call me 'potato?'" Yeah, exactly! Language is simply too complex, and too based on habit, to accommodate every personal taste or whim in this regard; in the absence of a common practice, at the very least, we need to legislate a correct pronoun for people to use. It might not catch on, but it might; I mean, I've been calling police officers "police officers" for most of my life, having been raised on "policemen," so who knows? Just pick a single pronoun we can all agree on, and not only will I attempt to re-train myself, I will even teach my students to use it as well (good luck revising all those textbooks, by the way).
The thing about all this, however, is that it has almost nothing to do with Peterson's actual work, at least as far I see it. It may be what has drawn some of the attention/ notoreity he's received - and it has probably helped sell his book - but, having read only the first chapter, so far, of said book, I have seen a) nothing remotely phobic of any group; b) nothing speaking to the controversy over Bill C-16, in his writing (though don't rule out that he'll get there sometime); c) nothing even that controversial; and d) nothing that I actually disagree with (yet). His first chapter focuses for a good part, as some of you may know, on dominance hierarchies among lobsters. He basically argues - as he explains to Newman - that hierarchical impulses are deeply ingrained in our biology, and not a mere artifact of any social system, so that if you want a better life, you should try to stop slouching around like a one-clawed defeated weak lobster and look at helping yourself through improving how you carry yourself, how you stand, how you walk, and how you think of yourself. Treat yourself (and behave) as someone who deserves respect, and you will find you get more respect, feel more respect for yourself, and be better equipped to make other productive changes in your life.
It's pretty straightforward, and it is not bad advice at all - and if you think that there's no need for advice like that in today's world, I would argue that you've come from a very privileged position - maybe not financially; but you've obviously been spared some of the huge existential/ emotional/ political and personal insecurity of modern life, if you can't see how advice like the above might be useful. Y'see - I write all this as someone who, through much of my 20's, was deeply, deeply lost in the world, confused about how I should be. Even back in the early 1990's, my head was filled with identity-politics, feminism, socialism, punk rock, and - maybe even more destructively - Nietzsche, Robert Anton Wilson, and Tim Leary. I was a virgin. I was fond of certain psychoactive drugs. I had self-harming habits, cutting crosses into myself with razorblades (since a Catholic upbringing was also part of my baggage). I watched way too much porn. I was in bad health. I had dropped out of school, and when I took jobs, they were shitty, gas-station/ convenience-store type jobs, at the low end of the employment spectrum. I had no idea what I was going to be, or how to face the challenges ahead of me, and was filled with fear and confusion and self-disgust. Chaos - which Peterson sees himself as offering a remedy for - was a very real and very destructive companion to me, back then, and I was probably headed down a very unproductive path, maybe even mental health issues, so much so that I volunteered at Riverview for awhile, to see if I might have insight into what patients were going through, that I might use to help them (I considered being a psychiatric nurse before I ever thought to become an ESL teacher; ultimately I decided against that).
Being given a whack upside the head really helped, back then. In my case, it came from a Lakota "teacher" I encountered, a rather remarkable (and very much conservative) man who kind of reoriented me, kicked the shit out of some of my weird pretensions, and encouraged me towards a "Life Skills" training course. He basically changed the direction of my life, around age 26; without his input, I might never have completed my degree, picked a profession, gotten published, gone to Japan, gotten married, or made any of the changes that lead me to my current state, which is vastly superior to where I was at back then. I'd be an artsy, stoned, maybe institutionalized, certainly marginal weirdo/ loser. Or I'd have killed myself. Because the fact of it was, at age 26, I had lost all grip on how to be in the world, how to live a good, productive life. I had no idea what such a thing would look like. The core values of how to be a good person in the world were all eclipsed by noise and bad weirdness. This fellow helped me immeasurably, and I owe him a great deal.
And posture was indeed part of what he talked about; in fact, much of what I gather Peterson discusses, while coming more from an academic/ Jungian-Campbellian point of view than that of Lakota warrior/ pipe carrier, reminds me of stuff said guy taught me (later reinforced by that Life Skills class). Since, as I mentioned above, my last few months of bad health - to say nothing of other major life changes in recent years, from the death of my mother to losing a chunk of my tongue to cancer surgery - had me feeling a bit lost and confused as to who or how I should be. Getting back to the basics - looking at our biology, our psychology, our traditions, and our myths and literature, all of which are concerns of Peterson's - seems welcome and productive. I absolutely understand why so many young men have described his writing as "life changing." It isn't, for me, but nor does the amount of rage against him we are seeing make sense to me, yet. I mean, maybe there are things he's going to say later in the book that are going to raise my eyebrows, but he hasn't so far, and mostly what I'm seeing in places like the Newman interview or the commentaries by pundits are misrepresentations or evasions of his ideas. (Or are comments written on social media by people who haven't read ANY of his book; at least I've read the first chapter).
So far, my reaction to Jordan Peterson is pretty positive, actually, even if I think he's wrong about C-16. And rather than write further - since I am allowing myself a few more hours off this morning before I get down to lesson planning - I am now going to go back to bed with the 12 Rules for Life and see about finishing chapter two.
Monday, May 28, 2018
Sunday, May 20, 2018
Nomeansno: the Rob Wright Interview
I sure do miss Nomeansno. I wish they'd done a farewell show.
Truth be told, I missed their last big Vancouver gig, at the Rickshaw (though I went twice to a three night stint, I think it was, at the Biltmore a year or so previous). One of the best bands ever to come out of Victoria/ Vancouver, ever. Wayyy up there. And Rob Wright is a much less intimidating guy than you'd imagine from his lyrics and/or the intensity of his playing. He's a pretty easy interview, actually - generous, funny, patient, and frank.
Truth be told, I missed their last big Vancouver gig, at the Rickshaw (though I went twice to a three night stint, I think it was, at the Biltmore a year or so previous). One of the best bands ever to come out of Victoria/ Vancouver, ever. Wayyy up there. And Rob Wright is a much less intimidating guy than you'd imagine from his lyrics and/or the intensity of his playing. He's a pretty easy interview, actually - generous, funny, patient, and frank.
So - without much preamble, here is a giant interview I did with Rob, around the time of All Roads Lead to Ausfahrt, and never before seen online in completion before now. We miss you, Rob! Hope you're enjoying your retirement.
T-shirt reads: "I have the body of a God. Unfortunately it's Buddha." Photo by Jillo, at the Horseshoe Tavern in Toronto (I believe at a show I was at!).
I’m
starting my recording device.
Oh boy. Here we go. Huh huh huh huh.
Gotta
confess that I’m a just a bit nervous,
here. If I ask any stupid questions try to forgive me…
No. I’ll just hang up, that’s it, cold. I’ll
be gone. (laughs).
That
sets me right at ease… The first question, I’ll try to be cute: Are you now or
have you ever been a Catholic?
Catholic? No. I’m Irish, but Black Irish.
All my relatives came from Northern
Ireland
So
the Mr. Wrong persona – I take that as sort of a Nazi and a Catholic priest?
Also a lawyer, cop – it’s just basically
all the authority figures rolled into one. It’s funny how when you get all
these respectable figures and put them into one little… it ends up looking really
really ominous.
Particularly
if it holds a shotgun…
Well, yeah. A few props don’t hurt.
Are
you aware of any animosity between Catholics and Protestants in your family
history?
No, no, not at all. Actually I lived in a
neighbourhood in Richmond Hill
And caricaturing
yourself as a performer?
Oh, absolutely. Being onstage one must
remember, always remember that one is in some sense a clown. And I thought, you
know – a clown costume. That and Robbie Hanson there – it’s all clown costumes.
Hm.
I gotta admit, with all the guilt and moral heaviness of Nomeansno lyrics, I’d always
assumed you were a Catholic – sort of the Graham Greene of punk.
(Laughs) Oh Good lord. No, more like the
John Knox of punk. My heritage is more puritanical than Catholic, so I get that
kind of moral outrage and sternness from the Lutheran side of my family.
John
Knox?
John Knox is the inventor of the
Presbyterian faith in Scotland
Nietzsche
was raised Lutheran, wasn’t he?
He could very well have been, there were
many Protestants in Germany, but that’s something I don’t know, it’s a good
question.
So...
uh, the new album. It has quite a different feeling from past releases. It’s a
lot of fun...
I think so. I think, the last album in
particular before this one, ONE, was a very dark album. And, uh, this album is
sort of is basically, it’s sort of in a sense like WRONG was, because WRONG was
sort of, after we did SMALL PARTS, we thought, well, no more epics, let’s just
throw a bunch of songs together and whatever comes up and seems to have a good
beat, we’ll put that on. This one kind of has that bent because for one thing,
John, my brother, wrote the majority of the music, and I ended up putting lyrics
on the majority of his music, in fact, I think, all of it.
So
the music came first?
Yes, in the main cases. Only a few songs…
“Til I Die” was mine completely… Oh God, I can’t even remember the ones.
”I’m Dreaming and I Can’t Wake Up?”
That’s one of mine, yes, you’re absolutely right. But I think most all of the others, if I’m not mistaken… No, uh, I think “Mr. In-Between” is all mine, and so is “In Her Eyes.” But then the rest of those are all combinations of me and my brother, and actually Tom as well, especially in the song “The Hawk Killed the Punk.”
Tom was
more involved in writing the music this time out, right?
Yes, he had more of an input, even in songs
he didn’t write. His guitar parts often – often in my songs I don’t have any
guitar parts. A lot of songs were combinations of him and John putting riffs
together. It was very loosely done, actually. A lot of it just came in with
people bringing in parts and sticking them together and then about a month
before the recording session we had, like, eleven songs that didn’t have any
words, and I thought well… (laughs). So I just kept going to the practice space
early in the morning and boom, writing lyrics, which is a lot of fun. I find it
very easy in a sense to put lyrics onto other people’s music – easier than
writing my own songs.
You seem to have really indulged your fondness for nursery rhymes in “Mansion in the Sky.”
You seem to have really indulged your fondness for nursery rhymes in “Mansion in the Sky.”
That one is a total jam. That one is not -
the music is really not written by anybody. It’s a rhythm set up by John, with
a bassline that, I kind of did with the feel that he asked me, and then Tom’s
parts are all over. The only part that’s really set were the, is the sort of
melodic disco part in the middle, which is all John’s music and all my melody
and words…
Why
hasn’t Tom written much before?
Basically, Tom has always written his own
music for his own work, which is his solo albums and his Show Business Giants
albums, so basically his material, which is uniquely his, always had that
avenue, and… a lot of it would have sounded very odd on a Nomeansno record. Not
many of his songs would fit on a Nomeansno record, simply because they’re all
Tom, really. Show Business is really unlike a lot of ---- music, and his solo
stuff is even better I think, the latest things he’s done. But in the nature of
this album, it was just because the songs were being put together quite
loosely, and he had a chance to be involved… Often in the past I would just
come and sa y here’s the words,
here’s the music, learn it, and John would do that as well, although often in
the past I wrote the majority of the songs anyway, so… But he would do his
guitar parts, and a song like “A Little Too High” off the last album, that’s
all my riffs and lyrics but all his guitar stuff is his own.
Is
“The Hawk Killed the Punk” his own?
He started off with the riff, and John
decided we were going to do something exotic, so he started playing in 5/4 and
they decided I should play in ¾, and – no, yeah, so it’s 5/4, 3/4, and
4/4, John Tom and me respectively, so…
If you listen, if you turn your balance from one side to the other, so you get
more guitar or more bass, you’ll find that one is a swing number and the other
is a straightforward rock and roll number, and John’s just going in between. It
takes the whole verse for it to come around together mathematically and end all
at once. (laughs) It’s fun, because I think… it does… people know there’s
something wrong but they don’t really know what it is, and the song rocks so
well they don’t really care, but everyone is like, what the hell-? Are they
making mistakes up there, what’s really going on in this song? It’s just very
odd time signatures, let me tell you.
You
wrote the words, though.
Yes I did, actually, but that one again is kind of a combination, because I had an idea for words for a poem I had written, and we decided to change it to “The Hawk Killed the Punk” – before it was about something else – and then we just – I wrote the words but basically on order, people would come up with ideas. Tom and John would come with ideas of what we should stick in there and then I just sort of made it rhyme, put it into a syntax that scanned, right.
What’s it about? What is “the hawk” supposed to be?
The hawk is a Mohawk.
Ah!
I see!
If you’ve got the lyric sheet you’ll see
that the… it’s a list of things that are generically punk, and basically what
this person is doing is channelling himself into being a nonentity, a generic
figure, with a Mohawk, tattoos, listening to thrash music. And it’s a way of
actually freeing yourself. Monks do the sa me
thing. One way, if you’re trying to get away from the self, is that you put on
a uniform and look like everyone else and therefore you become part of group
which is more of your identity than any single identity you would have.
So
“nothing of himself remains” is a positive state?
Yes, it can be taken that way… The trick is
there is what reason you’re doing it for. People who escape from themselves
because of the pain of who they are, that’s usually not the right solution.
People who escape themselves to try to have a better perspective and to cease
being concerned only with their own personal problems and peccadillos, those
people are often the wisest of us all. (laughs)
Talking
about making people feel more alive, with the darkness and pain that Nomeansno
seem to dwell on, with songs like “He Learned How to Bleed,” I’ve often
suspected the band of having a streak of masochism.
No, it’s basically the fact… a lot of the
reasons people don’t feel anything at all is because if they do they have to
come to grips with a lot of pain. Being alive involves a lot of pain, and what
most people do is basically dull their senses to escape that, so a lot of
people’s efforts psychically go into repressing pain and concerning themselves
with day to day activities, y’know, eating, drinking, smoking, watching TV, sa ying little or nothing
of importance to the people around them,
but talking at all times, um…And there’s an undercurrent of course of pain, and
if you want to really be alive you have to experience the pain. And that’s not
a masochistic thing, that’s a growth thing. Growing is painful, and if you
don’t go through that, you don’t grow, you just kind of get sort of older and
deader, and I’m afraid that’s kind of the situation many people will end up in.
But
people can indulge their negativity too much.
Suffering can be self-indulgent, but often
that’s not the kind of suffering that… Often again, that’s…People who choose to
suffer in a certain outward way involving their faith or the personality
they’re trying to project are also in that way avoiding true pain that they do
not want to face, because there’s a lot of fear involved and a lot of challenge
to who one is… I mean, a lot of people have secrets, they have dark and painful
secrets and by not going through them they don’t learn how generic they are and
how everyone has these sa me secrets
and basically the only way to get rid of them is to grow out of them, and I
think, a lot of people, you know, self-flagellation and self-denial involved in
the Catholic or other religious faiths are also just a way to avoid true pain.
How
does punk fit in as a way of embracing pain and connecting with emotion?
Through moshing, through communal experience?
Through communal experience, for sure. I
mean, music has always been a way for people to connect emotionally, I mean,
that’s what it’s been doing since before they grew food or built houses… Music
and musical expression. There’s studies now where people believe that singing,
that vocalizing predates speech and language, which makes sense. It’s a true
connector for people, um. And punk rock is sort of a way of doing that, that’s
why it has such a community, that why music can sometimes have such a strong
community feel to it, why people band together under the banner of musical
styles and tastes. It seems rather odd when you think about it really, but they
do, because music is a communal event and it does bind people together. I think
punk rock was… In the early 70s rock and roll had become the pantheon of the
Gods and the people making music were technical geniuses who employed huge
stage tactics and stuff. It had become a bloated and unreal thing with very
little relationship to the real lives of people who were listening to it. I
think that punk rock – as it came, gritty and primitive and streetwise and
showing all the negative sides of life, either inner city or from suburbia,
there was combination of both – it touched a chord in people that a band like
ELO would never do, you know what I mean. And a lot of people like I sa y have their dark secrets, a lot of people felt
inadequate, a lot of people felt like they were nobody and nothing and a lot of
people felt dead inside, like that they weren’t alive, weren’t allowed to be
alive, and again, punk was the negative expression of that, a way of sa ying no to… a way of sa ying
yes to life by sa ying no to
everything, if you know what I mean, and Nomeansno is part of that. There’s
strength in sa ying no. You know,
just sa ying, “Eat your vitamins!” and,
and -- “No!” “Why?” “Because I don’t want to! You know, there’s a power in
that, if that’s all you have, especially young people who don’t have any
answers, don’t know what the hell’s going on with themselves or anything else,
but they do know what they don’t like and that’s why punk was such an allure for
a lot of them, I think. And still is! Goddamn it, you still see the Mohawks and
the bleached hair and the heavy eyeshadow and it’s just amazing to me how the
style of music and style of living has survived for 30 years.
Nomeansno
fans seem a little more fanatical than the average. I gather people recently
came from as far as Poland to see you play the jazz festival, here.
One of the reasons that is because the
internet brings these people together and contact and gives them information
and again it’s another way of community getting together. So I don’t know if, I
think this happens with other bands as well, but I think we get rabid fans, people
who love us a lot basically because I think we’ve always tried to be honest.
We haven’t put our personalities on the
covers. I think in the music, the people we are shine through. And I think
people relate to that, at any rate. They know it’s not, we’re not doing it to
be famous, we’re not doing it to be rich and we’re not doing it to be
celebrities. Um. And so I think there’s a basic humanness there and the things
we talk about I think strike a chord with a lot of people. And that’s good. You
know you’re doing something right if what you sa y
has a semi-universa l you know, chord
to it.
Yeah,
it seems like a good thing that people are flying from so far away…
Although I think they’re nuts, I always
tell them that. “Why are you doing this, you know, this is crazy? There are
bands in your hometown that you could go see. Well, I hope you’re having a
great vacation, but it’s a little embarrassing, really, it is. ‘I flew all the
way from-‘Don’t tell me, it’s not my fault, I didn’t make you.’
One
of the interesting things in lyrics is that you seem uncomfortable with
authority role you’re forced into – in “My Politics,” for example... But you do
believe Nomeansno offer a positive thing to fans…?
It is, and I think… it’s nothing to do with
personality. That’s one of the main things that the band has always tried to
stick to, it’s a firm sense of, this is not about us, it’s about what we do. And
I always try to want to emphasize that to people and… in the way we present our
work to take as much of the personality (out of it), by either making fun of it
or making caricatures instead of ourselves…We’re in the process now of trying
to get a video together in which we will
not appear. (laughs). I truly think that, y’know, the most important thing that
people do -- about people’s lives is what they do, and the most dead end search
about those important things is to find out who those people are. I don’t think
it really matters. In some extreme cases it might. But, again… In some people,
what they do is who they are, and they put their whole personality as a part of
their craft. I’m thinking of a person like Johnny Cash – who he is was as much
his craft as the songs he sa ng, and
his whole image, it was a part of the work, y’know? But that’s absolutely not
true with us. We don’t have that kind of --We’re not trying to do that and we
don’t do it and I think anyone who’s sort of, ‘I’d like to know, y’know what John’s
really like – I know it (laughs). And it doesn’t matter what any of us are
like. We’re just basically pretty boring dudes, middle class white dudes,
getting rather old in the tooth, I tellya, too. So basically, y’know, if you
want to get something out of us, listen to the albums, or better yet, come and
see the shows.
All
right... so how do you guys go about touring?
Pretty basic, since day one. And we’ve been
doing it about the sa me with various
degrees of size. We once toured with two vans and had a few employees. But it’s
always been basically, we drive, we load, we load up again after the show and
drive again the next morning. It’s very -- low expenses mean better pay at the
end. And this is definitely us, just breaking even, making money…Small time
cottage industry – Nomeansno.
John
Wright had mentioned to me at one point that leaving A/T was about getting
wider distribution, but ironically, with the change of labels, everything disa ppeared.
Everything did, yes. Y’know… It’s always
the danger especially with a band on our level. It’s not like there are people waiting
to snap up a band that sells maximum of 10,000 to 15,000 copies of their
records, y’know? That’s not a big profit margin for anyone, even a small
company. Um… But having sa id that,
yes, I uh, didn’t have a great deal of prob lems
with A/T, I loved AT, I loved the people there, but again, it just got to be a relationship
that got old, and as they had their fights and battles we found that they were
not ours and to be involved with them was only hurting us. And we also just
wanted to, basically, at our age, gather everything under our own wing, under
our own control. And in terms of getting wider distribution, I’ve always liked
to have that but I didn’t ever want to be involved in the large scale corporate
large scale, music, show business… and of course, working with Greg Werckman and
Ant-Acid is the perfect medium between the two – between not being available
and, y’know, having to do in stores at HMV, so… like we’re the kind of band
anyone would show up to that, anyway. And we work with Southern in Europe , and they’re also… John Loder used to work with,
of course, that famous band I can’t remember from England Europe . So we’re, uh, I think we’re, uh, kind of settled
after years of being sort of in the wilderness, we’ve got a few good homes
again.
Is
there any potential for Ausfahrt to
be a hit, do you think?
There’s a chance, I mean, it’s not as a
dark, and there are -- it’s hard hitting, shorter songs, rockin’er stuff, uh,
but you never know what people are going to like or don’t like, I know people
who just love the 15 minute epics in which all the albums had like four songs,
y’know, and then there are people who (whines) ‘Why don’t you make another one
like Wrong, you know, ‘oh no bruno’” Ah, yeah, but… We’ll try. So we end up
doing a mix of both and nobody can like it, so… (laughs)
Would
it be accurate to say that the Hanson Brothers are more present this time out?
They got… They basically just took over
there for awhile and it got ridiculous. This band… We were doing more work for
the Hanson Brothers than we were doing for Nomeansno. But that happens, you
know. You release a record and people sa y,
why don’t go to Europe , and it did really well,
so we went again another couple of times. Pretty soon the year is over and all
you’ve done is put on a hockey mask and run around like an idiot all year, but
I have a lot of fun doing it. And yes, I believe they’re a big interest on the
new record. And that’s only natural. If you rekindle your interest in three
chord punk rock, especially since NMN never really indulged in that side of
their musical aesthetic, it just kind of brought back home how nice it is to
make short loud, punk rock pop songs. It’s totally fun, and things like “No
Solo” – we just had a great time. Who cares what it means? Put in a hook! I
like that!” (laughs)
I
admit, I love the album, but there’s a lightness to it I wasn’t expecting… I go
for the most morally heavy songs, myself. I mean, I’m 38, and I nearly give
myself a heart attack attempting to mosh to “The River.” I find the new album a
bit light!
You’re absolutely right. Again, we’re gonna
get this. All the people who used to yell us for not doing short punk rock
songs, now all the other half of the audience is gonna yell at us for not
putting out, y’know, ‘Bitches Brew 2.’ Though I don’t think anyone really wants
that. That might be straining the bounds of that… That might have singly sunk
the last record. I can’t think of anyone listened to that song all the way
through. I think it was one of the best things we’ve ever done, but you cannot
expect a punk rock audience to sit and listen to a fifteen minute rehash of a
reworked jazz classic.
But you did it with Luca (of Zu) at the Commodore.
That was so much fun, so much fun.
But
it’s true, I think some of the audience were going, “I wanna mosh...”
Yeah, I know, I know. Well, that’s the
thing, you... Bands do that, I mean, bands set up their own limitations. We’ve
always respected that, because, you know, people pay their money and the come
wanting to see and hear what they expect to see and hear. Now, you can shake
that up a little but you don’t want to piss people off. You don’t want to make
them feel like, well, that’s not what I paid for. You know… I, I think you
should push your audience but I don’t think you should bully them.
I
loved it.
It’s the encore, man, that’s it. All bets
are off.
Tell me about this recording with Zu.
I have done a bit of stuff, in fact I’m
working on a couple of more tracks. We’ll prob ably
put out an EP together.
You’ll
meet up in NY?
We may do, yes. I’m not sure. I’m not sure
about that. I’m the last to hear about these things. I know we’ll meet again in
Italy
It’s
gonna be a Zu release?
I think so, I think so. It’s just me, it’s
not the rest of the band. I wanna insist on the title, A Visit to the Zu with Mr. Wrong, and you have me in a monkey cage passing a joint to a chimpanzee.
I
bet this is close as you guys have come to Eugene Chadbourne.
(Laughs) Yeah, I didn’t really like that
release. It’s too much, it’s insa ne,
you need them to play with someday who’s like... That’s what I’ve done, I’ll
tell you what, I’ve straightened them out. I’m puttin’ a couple of lyrics on
and make them sound like a blues band. I’m going against strength. There’s no
way I’m gonna try to outdo them in their 13/7 time signatures, 12 parts here 2
parts there. Unh-huh. I’m just going to lay over some rock and roll on top of
that.
Reel
‘em in… John Chedsey tells me you found turning 50 liberating?
I was thinking of finally getting a tattoo
across my forehead sa ying I DON’T
GIVE A FUCK, but that, that’s antisocial, I dunno… No, I think I’ve learned the
hard way over the course of the years that anger and frustration and
perfectionism and… it’s, it’s not worth the effort. It really does just spoil
the fun, and I’ve gotten to the point now where I just basically worry about
golf, playing bass, and playing on the computer, that’s about it.
So
you do spend time online...?
Shopping on Amazon for books on Buddhism, or playing trivia. No, uh, yeah… I do virtually nothing and I’m trying to make an actual art form out of it.
Do
you spend time on Nomeanswhatever?
Not unless there’s something upcoming.
Although I… it occurred to me after 25 years of being a musician, you know, maybe I should practice, and I’ve
actually started practicing the bass. Maybe I’ll learn how to play the piano.
Now it’s just whatever. Whatever comes to mind, I’ll give it a go. But mostly
I’m a very avid golfer and everything else comes second to that.
I
thought they were pulling my leg when they told me you were a golfer...
No, no – I’ve become a golf fanatic.
Sunshine, trees, air. It was a revelation to me. I started at the age of 45 and
I realized, y’know, that I’ve spent my entire life going from one room in a car
to another room, and the discovery that there’s another world out there that’s
quiet, it doesn’t involve a lot of talk and you just hit a little ball into the
trees and go in there and look for it, I love it, it’s great.
It’s
gonna take me awhile to process that.
(laughs) I told you folks, it ain’t too
exciting in there, don’t worry, you’re
not missing anything.
Nomeansno by bev davies, location unknown, Sept. 7 1984, not to be reused without permission
Nomeansno by bev davies, location unknown, Sept. 7 1984, not to be reused without permission
If I
can ask... “Wake Up” is filled with statements of desire, wanting three ways
and whatnot, whereas “Mondo Nihilissimo” is about as anti-hedonism as a song
can get. I like them both, but the interaction between them seems a bit, uh,
contradictory...
There are strange occurrences in there,
man. The thing about “Wake Up” you have to remember is that the continuing
refrain is WAKE UP, wake up from all this I WANT I WANT I WANT, smell the
coffee, smell the roses, and “Mondo Nihilissimo” is the sa me.
It’s like… I think Jerry Falwell would like that song, if he understood it. I
doubt if he did… But… It’s just that… people who just indulge themselves in the
pleasures of whatever are basically people who don’t care about anything and
who are basically in a state of despair, and all the booze, sex, drugs, money,
celebrity – whatever it is that feeds your little engine, it’s just nothing,
it’s worth nothing, it doesn’t mean anything, and I’m afraid that it’s all that
people these days, more and more, I’m a 52 year old man, but even to me over
the course (of life) I can see people just more and more and more not giving a
damn, but not in a good way, in a sense that they don’t think anything’s worth
anything so why not do anything you want, and it doesn’t matter who you hurt,
yourself or others, because it’s all meaningless.
Hmmm.
Have you read American Psycho?
I haven’t read the book but I sa w movie – I thought it was great.
Book
is even better.. I should fess up, I’m the guy who bugs you about James Joyce
at shows (Rob, when I pestered him at a gig, told me that his favourite book
was Ulysses, or “anything Irish.” When I spotted him at a Jello Biafra/Melvins
gig sometime later in Vancouver, I approached again, confessed that I’d tried
Ulysses, for the third or fourth time, and had been, once again, defeated. He
recommended drinking a shot of whiskey every page).
Oh (laughs, sounds surprised/amused).
Andy Kerr by bev davies, same gig, not to be reused without permission
Andy Kerr by bev davies, same gig, not to be reused without permission
Tell
me about “Heaven.”
Yeah, I think that’s one of the strongest,
a lot of people have pointed that out.
It’s
about embracing a simple life in the face of death?
Well, also… the song is basically about,
people look for the great meaning of life in religious profundity, in
intellectual profundity, in great thoughts, in great spiritual revelations… To
me, the most profound aspects of life are all on the surface, they’re in the
dust under your feet, they’re in the candy bar in your hands, they’re in the
air that you breathe, the morning sunshine. To me… People often search inward, too,
into themselves, searching for a true self or a perfect self or the God within
or whatever. And, um… To me, it’s all out
there, it’s out there in the simplest things. It’s washing the dishes, it’s
changing the bed, it’s picking up your kids from school, it’s talking to your
friends. Um… That’s where the sa cred
is to me in life, and that’s where you’ll find the transcendent, not in the Vatican
No,
but… how does that play against the worry about nihilism…? On the one hand
meaning is in what’s at hand, but in the US, people are so caught up in their
little selfish pleasures and lives that they’re completely ignoring what their
country is doing to the world. You seem not to want to comment too directly on
politics…?
No, because we’re musicians, and a) I have
no power and b) I have no real knowledge of what’s going on. So, y’know, every
man has his opinion, it’s just, very few man’s opinions are worth anything,
because most of us are completely uninformed. Which mine are. I’m gonna sit
here and talk about Iraq rob ably
don’t know the half of it, right or wrong, y’know. But what you can comment on
is the life you live around the people that you live it with, and all these
things, these big prob lems you can
see around you, like you sa y, you
can see disregard, disrespect, self-disrespect, disrespect of others. And also you
can see people who live with a simple compassion who wouldn’t hurt a fly, and
you can often learn from people you hardly know. By seeing certain simple acts.
You know, I work in a church, in a soup kitchen every Thursday at a local
church here, to dole out the soup, basically, and I work with three disa bled kids, and who they are is written on their
face, and in dealing with them and talking to them I’ve learned more about, you
know, the good and bad about people than watching a thousa nd
news reports or thinking a thousa nd
great thoughts about politics or religion. So. That’s the thing we like to
write about, or I like to write about, anyway.
If I
can ask about “A Little Too High” – are you fairly anti-drug?
No, I’m not, because drugs, like anything
else, can be used in a certain way. You can use a drug to break down a
calcified and hidebound view of reality. But if you use a drug simply to anaesthetize
pain or to liberate yourself from compunction and conscience, and allow
yourself to live in a state where nothing matters and what you do to yourself
or to other people just doesn’t concern you, you don’t even feel the
consequences of that, then of course against it. But… I’m also against that on
the level of people who spend their entire day making money. Those people prob ably do more harm in the world than any ten crack
addicts. I guy who sits there and makes dollars by ripping off and destroying
the lives of people around him… I mean, the people who ran Enron, they did more
harm to society than 500 000 junkies stealing your cassette deck from your car,
or whatever.
So
what about Jello? He DOES presume to offer his opinions on everything,
especially politics.
Yep…Well, he’s informed, that’s his passion, I mean, he goes out of his way to find out. And… that’s what interests him, you know, so that’s what he becomes an expert about. When you hear him talk… I don’t agree with everything he
Uh,
yeah…!
(Laughs).
I’ve
often wondered if “the beast has arisen” in Rags and Bones is about the mosh
pit experience... Some of the lyrics in that song are quite puzzling.
You know, that’s one song where… uh… It’s
sung… There’s another song like that song, even moreso, which is my favourite
song on the new record, which is “Slugs are Burning”… That song wrote itself,
and a year and a half (later? Ago?), I remember coming up to someone I was
working with, going, Eureka, I finally know what that song means! But for the
life of me from that time to this I’ve forgotten exactly what revelation I had
about it. But… I’m sure if I thought about it again I might redo it… but some songs
have a meaning you don’t know until after awhile, like “Slugs are Burning,” it
took me a long time to figure out why that song got written the way it did and
what the hell it was about… I think I have some idea now. It’s a song … I was
talkin’ to somebody else the other day about this. It’s about the joy of sa vagery, and how really no intellectual or
spiritual institution, religion or political ideology can deal with that or has
dealt with that successfully. They all deny it, they all want to get out of it,
they all want to get away from it. They condemn it overtly or they dismiss it
as being a mistake, ignorance… Even the Buddhists who I think are most wise of
the established religions really want to get out of that, but it’s the crux,
y’know… Fucking, eating, dying, and the joy and relish with which all beasts,
including the human beast indulge in that, is, is, is the fire of life,
basically, um, and it’s dark, it’s disgusting, it’s frightening, and yet it is
alluring, seductive, fiery – your appetite, being sa tiated,
it’s what produces children, and what kills them off eventually, y’know, and
that’s what that song came to be about.. And it’s a very joyful and very simple
song, and yet includes with in it, of course, very horrific, natural… I mean, the
slugs themselves crawling over dead bodies, I mean, These symbols revolt us,
because we’re afraid of this, and yet at the sa me
time, it’s the lifeforce, basically.
The
slugs are burning with desire, not pollution, then…
No… I mean… the slugs, like everything
else, are on fire. We all are creatures who are burning, we’re full of energy
and eventually that energy will burn
itself out and leave us as dust, that and… and… And all inanimate objects are
the sa me. They all contain a
channelled energy which eventually will
burn itself out and they will
dissolve to the last remnant of static heat, you know, the theory of entropy in
the universe, but… we all are burning, and that burning involves fire, desire,
and it also involves destruction, and it has no morality and (laughs) it has its
own agenda, a very simple one and it doesn’t care, give a damn about ours and
any of our more sublime and sophisticated thoughts, and like I sa y, it’s really something that no religion is able
to deal with successfully, except to call it the Devil and dismiss it and ban
it, forbid it. THOU SHALT NOT COMMIT ADULTERY. THERE SHALL BE NO TEEN
PREGNANCIES. Okay, fine, sa y that
from now to doomsday, it doesn’t make any difference, the weeds come through
the cracks.
Nomeansno by bev davies, Sept 7 1984, not to be reused without permission. Anyone know what venue this is?
How
about Satanists?
Absolutely true. They do it the other way,
the other extreme, they’re equally foolish. They think they’ll escape the
horror of it by embracing it, by owning it, by being the master of it, but of
course, the pain…They’re still dying, y’know. It’s all a defense, both the
rigid virtuous and dedicated demonic are all just trying to defend themselves
against the life that’s going to, like a tidal wave, just wash them away, like
it does everything.
You
were talking about songs that write themselves...
Well, I like songs like that, I really do,
to me they’re the most valuable because I get the most out of them. The ones
that just drop out of the blue, and once you start into them, and even as you
work them out, if you don’t fuck with them, if you don’t fuss with them, if you
don’t censor them, you’ll end up with a little jewel there, and it may not be
something that you’ll even appreciate until a long time afterwards.
Do
you have any favourites?
Usually the long epics, “The River” is a
standard, yeah, “Rags and Bones,” “Heaven” from the new album, it’s hard to
pick favourites because there’s a bunch that I like and then over the years I
think they sort of, the mix changes… I really loved doing “Bitches Brew,” that
was something I really enjoyed doing. But in some senses that Hanson Brothers’
song, “A Night Without You,” might be the best song I ever wrote. To write a
hooky, three-chord pop song with a romantic lyric that is somewhat bent, uh,
it’s very hard to do, because you’re so limited. It’s such a stiff discipline,
there’s not much you can do there. And songs like that – people who write songs
like that impress me a lot. And in some senses I think that’s the best song I
ever wrote.
What
are your tastes in film?
I like the Italian neorealists. I like
Antonioni and… I’ve gotten into DVDs serious, the quality of restorations in
some of these movies is just gorgeous, it’s just amazing. So, uh…I follow that
pretty standard arty sorta thing, I avoid all Hollywood
movies.
Are
you a Cassavetes fan?
Somewhat, not lately. I sort of liked him a
lot when I was in my 20’s and 30’s. But right now it’s mostly the Italians and
Werner Herzog, people like that.
Any
other last minute comments? Is the band planning its retirement?
If we ever do we won’t sa y so.
(...and they didn't).
Ford Pier Vengeance Trio plus The Invasives! ...and my final (god willing) Kidney Stone post
Hi, remember me? I finally peed out all my kidney stone chunks (see above). They're in the lab being tested, but I am finally back to a normal state, physically - no more bloody burning urine for me! No more excrutiating, lingering pain in the lower back! No more waking up five times a night to pee! ...and as big as these pieces are, they didn't even hurt that much to pass, believe it or not - it just felt like I was shooting spitwads through a straw. The stent had allegedly been helping them come out, but since nothing emerged for three weeks with it in place, and 20-30 similar chunks came out AFTER it was removed (an uncomfortable experience I will spare you a description of - I was NOT sedated for it), it seems the stent was actually keeping these little fuckers (and their kin) in place. They came out rapid fire after it was removed - all with a day and a half.
Surely that's all there was in me.
However, healthy or not, I'm still overwhelmed with life and work and not really feeling like writing much at all right now. You may be seeing the end of my career as a part-time music journalist, folks. (Though I do have a DOA interview as yet unspoken for in English, about their new album Fight Back, which is actually pretty great... let me know if you wanna pay me money for it!)
...but regardless of that... for the thirty or so of you who look at this, if you like angular, unusual, but infectious and engaging guitar-driven rock music, here's a great show (for a good cause) that you can go to this weekend: the Ford Pier Vengeance Trio plus the Invasives, doing a Grand Forks Flood Relief concert at the SBC Cabaret on Friday night, May 25th. I missed Ford's record release show a few weeks ago at the Cobalt, which if I understand correctly is now closed for good, but you know, I got Facebook friends who were pretty upset that I "crossed the line" to see a show there when I went to Pere Ubu last year... I got no regrets about that, but I also knew I'd have other chances to see Ford, like, say, THIS one, whereas I didn't think I would have another chance to see Pere Ubu (which I was almost proven wrong about, until the Rickshaw show got cancelled... they appear to be back on the road in Europe by the by... David is back to posting on the Ubuprojex site, last I checked... sounds like he is restored to his semi-curmudgeonly but no less lovable self...).
I got nothing very new to SAY about Ford OR the Invasives, however. I want Ford to record the song that he played before the Bob Mould show with the lyric about how "happy days are here again/ I'm bleeding out my ass." It isn't on this album. I can really, really identify with that line, though. That show - also by-the-by - had the most attentive audience I've ever seen Ford play to; he agreed with me afterwards that it was kind of strange to see a chatty Vancouver crowd paying THAT MUCH ATTENTION to an opening act, but they really seemed to groove on what he did, which was quite gratifying, especially since I could maybe factor myself in as having INFLUENCED their attentiveness by having given him some substantial press that week...
If by any chance you don't KNOW either of these bands, however - if you're a Nomeansno fan, in particular, these are both bands that have a strong musical connection to that legendary, now-retired, and much-missed trio, though with a host of other influences and individual idiosyncrasies (and with far less of the stern existential angst that permeates the work of Nomeansno). Ford and I talk about his history, including his dealin's with Nomeansno and his time in DOA, here; the FPVT's new album, Expensive Tissue, is a strong, quirky, original, highly Canadian, and all-round rockin'ly satisfying follow-up to Huzzah! (though I haven't done justice to it by far and apologize for the lameness of my obvious attempt at crit-speak earlier this sentence - can you sense me trying desperately to craft a potentially useful blurb? Fail). Byron Slack and I also talk about the retirement of Nomeansno and the history of the Invasives here. (Robot Stink is still their masterwork, by me, especially "Living Your Life Like It's Somebody Else's" and "Stop & Breathe." I may hit their merch table to see if it exists in vinyl...). I may not be doing very much work to blog about either band, but I'm excited for this show. And will probably go to it, work duties be damned.
I got no fresh pictures for this article but here's a great one Bev took, I believe of all the OTHER Invasives besides Byron. Maybe see you at the Buddha?
Tuesday, May 01, 2018
Formative albums list; the top 29, with a gesture at 30.
I've been neglecting this blog a bit! I've got a new computer and a semi-defective mouse that doesn't allow me to italicize properly, at least without a lot of strain; I'm still recovering from surgery and preoccupied with work and housework; and I just haven't felt like blogging (or writing much, truth be known). But there's this thing over on Facebook where people are naming ten albums and it got me thinking of formative influences and albums that have had a larger than average impact on my life. I can't keep it to only ten. But for the record, the albums that had the biggest, most lasting impact on my life - roughly in order of their coming into my life - would be:
1. Marty Robbins' Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs (I still have my father's copy. First album where I ever learned the lyrics to the songs - I could sing "Strawberry Roan" from memory at age eight. Great songwriting on this, in a country-western mode)
2. Simon and Garfunkel's Greatest Hits (first album I ever owned on my own steam, in my pre-teens, and while I don't listen to it now much, it has to be acknowledged. Another album where I learned all the lyrics to a few of the songs - and who can forget the whores of 7th avenue?)
3 and 4. The Kinks: Muswell Hillbillies and Give the People What they Want (both in my life from my pre-teens and still in my collection, though not the same copies; my original of Muswell Hillbillies - which my parents liked as much as I did, for "Have a Cuppa Tea," was on a Pickwick cassette I found in a discount bin!). Both albums get included a) to acknowledge the immensity of the Kinks and b) because they're very different - one from the classic period and one from the arena rock years. Truth is, since I SAW the Kinks during their arena rock years, touring I think this album (or maybe State of Confusion) at the Pacific Coliseum, that would be the one that I would pick, if I were only going to choose one. Except Muswell Hillbillies is so much better, objectively, and WAS a formative influence, so...
5. Doug and the Slugs' Cognac and Bologna (bought at the Maple Ridge Pay'n'Save, as I recall, and still with me today. A deep sentimental attachment here, as with Wrap It!, but I am only putting the one album on the list). The first album I ever owned (I think) by a local band.
6. Iron Maiden - The Number of the Beast. I went through a metal phase in my early teens, listening to AC/DC and Priest as well. I was embarrassed by this album for years and by Maiden and Priest, and I still can't listen to AC/DC much because of the "sexist thug" aspect of their music - great a spin on the blues - as it may be - but hell, I saw them as a teen and loved this stuff to death back then. And I have come to enjoying them. "Hallowed be Thy Name" is amazing.
7. Angel City (the Angels): Darkroom. Another album that has been close with me for years, that I still love, and maybe my first "contrarian" gesture, an album my love of which had at least SOMETHING to do with the fact that no one here cared about it. This had Doc Neeson at his most Dylanesque, if Dylan were fronting an Australian pub rock band. Even back then, I liked this better than AC/DC.
8. Motorhead - Iron Fist. The album from my "metal teens" that survived my conversion to punk and that has never really left my side (in some version or other) since I first owned it, when it came out.
9. The Blue Oyster Cult - On Your Feet or On Your Knees. This is obviously inferior to Secret Treaties but what can I say, I had it for YEARS before I got Secret Treaties and the version of "ME 262" on it - while kind of corny-sounding now - was my main exposure to the song through my teens. Fire of Unknown Origin was also in my collection before Secret Treaties, and was the album where I saw them on tour (maybe one of two times?). But man, did I love this double live album when I was a kid - and that gatefold interior, whoa.
10. The Sex Pistols: Never Mind the Bollocks, because it made me shift directions for years. It's kinda like the Simon and Garfunkel album though - I never listen to it these days (tho' I still have it). "Bodies" was an eye-opener.
11. DOA: Something Better Change - hugely important to me at age 14-15. (War on 45 too, but I am only giving DOA one spot, in part because I had to re-adjust this list to add Angel City to it).
12. Dead Kennedys: Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables - huge as a teen and maybe the most important album in defining my sense of what punk should and could be.
13. Subhumans Canada: Incorrect Thoughts (which would supplant the DOA entries, maybe, except I didn't own it for years! All the classic DOA and Subhumans stuff was out of print by the time I was actively looking for it. Eventually pulled a copy of this out of a "sale" bin at Collectors' RPM for a mere ten bucks, when it was worth four times that.
14. Nomeansno: Mama - which I owned when it was still Nomeansno's only LP! One of the most musically and lyrically ambitious punk albums ever, though it isn't "really" punk, is it? It's a singularity, really. I still love it.
15: The Clash: London Calling. Such a great album, I have to acknowledge it even though it is obvious. I am foggy on my sequencing here and might have had a few of the above BEFORE I acquired London Calling, which my parents bought for me on a trip to Montreal when I was 14.
16. the Spores: Schizofungi! - man I loved this. Another contrarian gesture, because the relative under-appreciation of the Spores at the time, save by a devoted cognoscenti, helped fuel my passion for this record. Still some very funny, smart "horror punk" (kinda) - beats the shit out of the Misfits for me.
17. No Fun: 1894 (Snivel was also important but I like this one better. I only ever liked SOME of the songs on Snivel, though David's best song in my view ("Ambivalence") is on it. Really not as big for me at the time as some of these others, but I did have it on cassette when it came out, David is a good friend now, he played at my wedding, and I enjoy chatting with the cover artist, ARGH!, when I see him at shows. So it gets a place!
18: the Flesh Eaters: Hard Road to Follow - again, a subjective favourite, not their best but it still has my favourite Flesh Eaters songs, and the day I found it and took a chance on it at Odyssey Imports was a pretty serious day for me!
19. Husker Du: Zen Arcade
20: minutemen: Double Nickels on the Dime: both of which (the Du and the Minutemen) I had when they came out and enthusiastically participated in fandom for, thanks to my father, who brought them both back from a Vegas road trip he took with a friend, along with a few other punk rock classics I asked him to look for.
21: the Replacements: Pleased to Meet Me. I acknowledge, again, Let It Be (and maybe even Tim) as better albums but this is the album I saw them tour.
22. New Model Army: No Rest for the Wicked. Saw a live clip of these guys on Soundproof, fell in love, still own it, still love them. In my perfect world U2 would be waxing Justin Sullivan's car.
23: the Meat Puppets: Up on the Sun
24. Sonic Youth: Sister
25: Tad: 8-Way Santa - because if I'm only going to pick one grunge album...
26. Mission of Burma: vs.
27. The Holy Modal Rounders: I and II (on a twofer gatefold LP lent to me by Matt Rogalsky. It took a long time for these albums to really bear fruit but I wouldn't have plunged into old-timey without them.
28. Pere Ubu: Terminal Tower
29. Ornette Coleman: Free Jazz. Hugely important in my 20's, and though the alley it led me down turned out to be a blind one - the friend I shared it most enthusiastically with killed himself awhile back; the drugs we took to help understand it proved ultimately counterproductive and/or damaging; and the visual arts we did while listening to it, as "aural Pollock," were not something I pursued outside my 20's. I never spin it now - would be more likely to listen to Don Cherry's Brown Rice, or maybe some of the pan-African stuff of the time, Archie Shepp or the Art Ensemble of Chicago or something BYG-ish - but the one that made the deepest mark was Free Jazz.
29. Shockabilly: Vietnam/ Heaven: speaking of drugs, this twofer CD was the one my friends most frequently made me turn off, while I giggled at their frailty. I don't really enjoy Eugene Chadbourne as much as I did, which has SOMETHING to do with interviewing/ hanging out with him a bit - he's a bit prickly! - but boy did I love this at the time.
30... here I get undecided. Captain Beefheart feels like he deserves a space (and for Trout Mask, but it's not one I listen to at all now; I prefer, believe it or not, The Spotlight Kid). Sun Ra's Space is the Place was pretty important to me too, and I still do own it and spin it, though infrequently. The Cramps' Psychedelic Jungle obviously calls out, as does Slow's Against the Glass. The Stooges' Fun House and the Velvets' White Light/ White Heat - both of which I learned about as a teen through a singularly helpful Henry Rollins' article in Spin, when it was actually a cool magazine - are epochal albums but I came late to them and can't really say they shaped me (Iggy did, but I would have to include Zombie Birdhouse, if I were honest, since it was my first Iggy, I believe, and appeals to the contrarian in me). Camper Van Beethoven probably have had a bigger influence on me than I'd ever acknowledge, in terms of setting up my fondness for bands like the Creaking Planks, say, but they also seem kinda trivial in ways. I listen to Nick Cave and Townes van Zandt and Robyn Hitchcock sometimes and love them lots when I do, but did they shape me? Do they really merit a space here? Bison's Quiet Earth really made a big mark on me awhile back, and along with Motorhead, got me back into metal; without them I'd never have reclaimed some of the metal of my teen years, and never have explored any death/ black/ stoner metal (though that was also a bit of blind alley, thankfully. Real interesting while it lasted, though). And Bison's Lovelessness is one of the most expressive, emotive rock albums I've ever heard - fuck, Farwell wears his heart on his sleeve on that album, and what a soulful, beautiful sleeve it is. Also, nowadays, I kinda love Guided by Voices, at least some days, but my tastes and habits were formed long before I got to them. Alabama Shakes first two albums are things my wife and I can share our enthusiasm for and are great, but I never spin them of my own volition. The New Creation's Troubled was huge for a few years, too, influenced a fair bit of writing, has a personal connection to me in that I was a regular customer of Ty's, and to top all that off I count Chris Towers as a friend now, so it feels like it deserves a space - except I almost never listen to it lately. I'd be way more likely to spin a Dr. John record (and hey, why not include one of his records on the list, or, say, the Rolling Stones' Satanic Majesties or Exile or...?).
I mean, I dunno. What should I put for number 30?
I would like to include my wife in this list somehow, even though before I met her my tastes were quite formed and I wasn't taking in a lot of "newer" music. Like I say, Alabama Shakes is dishonest, because I only ever listen to them when Erika does. I could acknowledge her in a different way, and include John Renbourn's Faro Annie, since a) we played music off of it at our wedding, as she walked down the aisle, b) I have had it in my collection a long time; c) without Renbourn, I wouldn't be listening to Fairport Convention, or Anne Briggs, or any of the British folkie stuff I listen to sometimes, and since d) unlike a lot of the rootsy Americana I like, it is NOT in any way prefigured by my love of the Holy Modal Rounders...
Wait, wait... there.
30. Leonard Cohen: Songs from a Room. I think.
There, the list is done.
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