Los Furios EARLY SHOW Sunday at the Rickshaw (and online in Montecristo Magazine)

The last time I saw Los Furios was one of the happiest concert experiences I've had this century, seeing a local band get a totally enthusiastic reception from an audience that were not local at all. It's also my second-favourite Commodore experience ever, after having seen Joe Strummer and the Pogues there. I used this as a key element in a story for Montecristo this week, because I could and because I thought they rocked that night... I think Los Furios, accustomed to a certain level of being taken for granted locally, might be slightly surprised the press happened, but their story makes a great read. I have no idea whether it will do them good tonight, but the show is on, starting early, and I am going to the Rickshaw  with a yen for "Cantina" and the intention to get a bit intoxicated and dance my ass off! 

I have had internet issues this week. so I was not able to do a decent blogpiece with my outtakes from the interview (and it's a bit late now), but there is another factor in wanting to write about Los Furios, and it has to do with hometown loyalty... read on for more...

(Corinne Kessel, everyone's favourite member of Los Furios?)

Y'see, back in the 1980s, especially in small towns like Maple Ridge, it took a bit more commitment to be a punk than it does now: if you had spiky, dyed hair, for instance, you risked being laughed at, spat at, or sometimes even beaten up. You would be walking alone at night, minding your own business (but looking weird) and a bunch of jock dipshits would drive past you in their Camaro or Mustang or such and -- because any guy who would style their hair must have been queer, which back then was not a reclaimed term -- they'd shout some homophobic slur at you from a rolled-down window, maybe chuck a beer bottle at you or such. If you were walking alone, you'd watch nervously as they slowed their car, idling up ahead,  wondering if they were about to leap out and shitkick you. 

I was spared most of that action, actually; I never looked scared enough for them -- craven cowards and pathetic bullies, the lot -- to be an inviting target, I guess, but I did get punched in the head once for talking back to someone who used a particularly uninventive homophobic slur on me (I shot back, "Asshole!" and he didn't like it). And I did have a bunch of stoners, smoking up in a park outside Maple Ridge Secondary, in their long-sleeved Led Zep tees and ubiquitous AC/DC shirts, pelt me with rocks once, as I walked by them, listening to the Exploited on my shitty Realistic tapedeck. Which story I have always ended with a punch line: I was stoned by stoners, ha ha... 

...But it kind of hurt my feelings. Some of them were kids in my class, you know? The rocks didn't hurt much -- a couple pelted the backs of my thighs and calves and bounced away. When I realized what had happened, I turned and stared at them -- a row of at least twenty kids, throwing rocks at the punk, and I guess they could read my disgust and disappointment, because once I faced them, not a rock connected.  

Anyhoo, experiences like that tend to drive members of the in-group (the punks) together, to help define them against the out-group (which included the headbangers, the stoners, the jocks, and the rednecks, who were kind of referred to en masse and seemed to make up 80% of the population of Maple Ridge. There was no internet, there were no places to buy punk music. If there were punk bands from Maple Ridge, I didn't know about them. Except for the first Ten Feet Tall demo tape. That, I had. Great cover art! 

I think it was actually Kyle Fury (nowadays the frontman of ska-punk band Los Furios) who recognized me from back when, and pointed out that Ten Feet Tall had been his band. I don't think I would have recognized him -- I didn't know him well, never saw Ten Feet Tall play live. But I was glad that they existed, that Maple Ridge was represented, and it's utterly great that they have had the success they've had, even if it's been mostly in other places! 

So knowing one of my editors at Montecristo is partial to ska, and having my second-favourite ever Commodore Ballroom stories up my sleeve (after seeing the Pogues -- with Shane -- and Joe Strummer there, filling in for a sick Philip Chevron, some 20 years prior) -- I pitched a Los Furios story at the mag, apropos of their Sunday Rickshaw show. Really it's just an expression of tribal loyalty -- Maple Ridge homeboys! -- but I sure did enjoy their set at the Commodore, that night. Read about it in the article...?

BTW, my favourite Los Furios release is probably this one. Some of the lyrics to "Cantina" remind me a bit of being stuck in Maple Ridge, as a kid. I think it's a pretty fun piece of writing, and that it's going to be a really entertaining show. Hell, I may even dance... Note, the show is now being billed as an "early show," with doors at 7pm! Apologies in advance for any pressure I may have put on Los Furios to deliver, for their first Vancouver show since pre-COVID (if memory serves).