"When brilliant but erratic songwriter Rodney has to give a concert, spectres from his troubled past emerge to play tug-of-war with his well-being, torpedo his relationships (especially with his long-time manager and closest friend Samantha), and plunge him into a battle for his soul inside a giant fish."
Friday, November 22, 2024
Rodney DeCroo's In the Belly of the Carp
"When brilliant but erratic songwriter Rodney has to give a concert, spectres from his troubled past emerge to play tug-of-war with his well-being, torpedo his relationships (especially with his long-time manager and closest friend Samantha), and plunge him into a battle for his soul inside a giant fish."
Friday, November 08, 2024
Long pause?
I am tapped out. I did a big push to celebrate my 20th anniversary of writing this year, both here and in Vancouver papers, but I have exhausted myself and need a break. I donated a few fun things to the Straight on Bev Davies, Alex Maas, Grace Petrie, and Gustaf and direct you all to their website. I posted some vid of Gustaf (look it up if you like) and shot nothing of Grace, because Rogue Folk was videoing the whole night and they get dibs. One story: I gave Grace an Ivan Coyote book that someone else had given her already, because "apparently there's something about me that makes people think of Ivan Coyote," which was the funniest thing she said when NOT on stage. Hi to Graham Peat, nice to see you there, and we have to trade Election Night at the Rio stories sometime (Erika and I were there last time Trump won!!!).
Thinking of giving up on non-paying writing in general, with MAYBE the occasional exception of this blog, but if I'm going to continue, I may (gasp) have to monetize it or something. 20 years without ads (and none of those unseemly bi-monthly Wikipedia Begging Campaigns) is a good enough run -- and I would say I have served my community, paid my dues, so, like, fuggit. I will still do paid pieces, and I DO have a couple unpaid stories I have promised out (don't worry, Andy), but generally, there's a Dils song that comes to mind when it comes to writing... we also might think of Grace Petrie's song, "You Pay Peanuts You Get Monkeys, You Pay Nothing You Get Nowt."
There was someone at the show tonight with Queer as Folk vinyl and I pouted at her that "I thought I was the only person here with Grace Petrie vinyl" and she laughed and felt happy, so that was nice.
Black Angels -- go read it on the Straight, then go back and read the Bev piece, then read the Black Angels again, then the Bev again. That's how I'd do it, anyhow: they are interlocking and shed light on one another, kinda.
Peace out!
Sunday, November 03, 2024
Richard Thompson, Bob Mould, and Mr. Chi Pig (and Grace Petrie)
Gay punk rockers came up more than I expected at tonight's Richard Thompson show, but there's nothing to be made of it, really -- it was just unexpected. First off, Thompson explicitly referenced Bob Mould's punk cover of "Turning of the Tide" and said that his band was going to do a punk-informed recreation of Mould's cover of Thompson's original acoustic song, which, he told us, is about young British men running around Hamburg (I'm assuming he meant the Beatles? I didn't know the song so I can't do justice to the lyrics). It was very much like what you see on Youtube from Colorado, a few days ago... except it was live. Seeing Richard Thompson live really is kind of essential; clips (and recordings) don't really do him justice, I've found (I still bought his Austin, Texas DVD off the merch table -- it's really a peak live set, by me).
Then later in the evening, even if this was surely just me thinking this, I was surprised to find my mind going straight to Mr. Chi Pig during "Beeswing," specifically the verse:
And they say her flower is faded now
Hard weather and hard booze
But maybe that's just the price you pay
For the chains you refuse
Fans of the song "Beeswing" should note that Grace Petrie, who performs in Vancouver on November 7th, has a cover of it; perhaps she'll do it? Petrie was by far my favourite "discovery" at the last folk festival (more on her to come; see also here), and she does have a debt to punk, but she's about 20 years younger than I am (and I guess maybe 40 years younger than Thompson), so our reference points are a bit different! (Billy Bragg is a common one, though, and Tom Robinson, and Thompson himself...).
Saturday, November 02, 2024
Anyone want a bowling ball? Alienated 20th anniversary report
The Minimalist Jug Band gets it. He brought, apropos of nothing, a bowling ball to the Alienated 20th anniversary gig, to put on the merch table. Later on, when I was reflecting on this, I theorized that maybe it was some sort of bat-and-ball "physical pun" but it was not: he'd found it and just thought it would be appropriate, since he had so much stuff already -- the washtub, the stick, some merch, and several pairs of pants -- to add to the burden and carry it too. It might have gotten a bit hidden on the merch table -- I used it as a structural element to prop up the 1894 mock-up cover -- and in fact people seemed to avoid the merch area, for the most part -- but no one even blinked or pointed at it; there was no "Why is that watermelon there?" moment, if you see what I mean. I confess that even I didn't think much about it at the time either. Then at the end of the night, when I was cleaning up the merch area, I was like, "Why did Al bring that bowling ball? Does he want it back?"
He was gone by that point, so I packed it home. It was, indeed, real heavy -- it's a full-sized bowling ball, not one of those junior-sized ones. I already had a bag of shirts and unused posters and my usual backpack and a bunch of other stuff to carry, but you can't just leave a bowling ball for Lana and Mark to wrangle. Luckily I had a ride home...
...So now I have this bowling ball and it's really heavy and he doesn't want it back and I have to figure out what to do with it and it seems like a SYMBOL of something, like... what if Sisyphus was doing shift work? What if there was some guy he traded off with? I figured I'd check to see if Bert Man wanted it ("Do you bowl?") but he doesn't. I feel, in fact, weirdly flattered that Al would pass this ball onto me, but, I mean, that doesn't mean I have shelf space for it, you know? (Suddenly I have this image of myself standing in a doorway in a raincoat: "Psst, hey buddy, wanna buy a bowling ball?")
Anyhow, people said real nice things about me, and Gord McCaw took tons of photos, and I had fun "eeping" with David on a few versions of "If I Was a Bat" (including one brilliant one to the tune of "The Monster Mash" which I had never heard before; I had not even realized when setting up the gig that it was Bat Week!). I spent enough time serving as emcee and otherwise running about doing stuff that I didn't really get to be "in the audience" as I'd have liked, but still was delighted to hear a few of the deeper cuts off 1894, like "Not in Your Town," "No Orchestra Required," "Snog," "To Hell with the Past," and, indeed, a bat-themed rewrite of "Work, Drink, Fuck, Die" that had eeps for a chorus, which I almost missed (I'd been outside saying goodnight to Rowan Lipkovits -- and making sure he got the accordion safely to his car! -- so I had to sprint to the stage to join in). Pete Campbell seemed to be singularly cookin' on the guitar and Dave Dedrick was very deferential about sharing a mic...
Rachel -- the "Strob" in Coach StrobCam -- couldn't make it, but Greg "Coach" Kelly and Pete Campbell, who I introduced as "Coach Cam" but who referred to themselves as "Coach StrobCan't," after something David said at a previous gig Rachel was also not at -- did a few bang-up originals, and a new arrangement of their own version of "If I Was a Bat" (which is closer to my "original tune" than the David M. version but has clearly become its own thing, which was kind of delightful in its own right: they've made it their own, which gives me hope for its longevity; the more bats, the better. More about the history of that song here). I was very happy to hear "Hockey Sucks" again and get it on video, and -- here's a little behind-the-scenes tidbit for people -- earlier that day had found the Johnny Hanson Presents Puck Rock Volume 1 CD at a library sale, which, it turns out, PETE DID NOT HAVE (see track 20, here). So I gave it to him (I already have one).
I must admit, Greg and Pete did a fine job without Rachel -- Greg's got a great voice! -- but I still sent her a Creature from the Black Lagoon and If I Was a Bat t-shirt, for Pete to give her when she's feelin' better. I believe I gave everyone who performed a bat shirt, but I might have missed Dave Dedrick? I might have to do another run, which I had not planned. Kent Lindsay needs one too... cost about $500 bucks to make them, all told, and I believe the only one I sold went to Enrico Renz, for his wife -- but, you know, I'd rather give away $500 in shirts than have $470 worth of them (and a bowling ball) left over at the end of the night! Plus Erika's parents got theirs, and her brother and a friend, and she and I got them, and... you know, no one got any MONEY for this gig, right? If you're wondering about the economics of it all, we had about fourteen paying customers and about fourteen playing musicians, which would mean maybe $20 per bandmember if there were no other expenses, but I'd also paid LanaLou's (they make most of their money on the bar and restaurant end so this was surprisingly doable) and spent $100 on advertising (and bought $150 of NO FUN stuff I did not already have). In the end, I pocketed what was left at the door and was only down about $550 bucks for the night!
Rowan -- who missed the start of the night, sadly, including Al's delightful "Dead Man's Pants," which Rowan's band The Creaking Planks are known to cover -- explained about the need to dig deep for surprising, fresh things to interpret on the accordion, after which he started his set with a Billy Eilish tune ("Bury a Friend"), then a Taylor Swift one. Both were great -- they are songs I don't know, because I follow no actually "popular" popular music, but you can't do songs like these on the accordion and NOT make them your own, you know?
I had mentioned to everyone, in the run up to the gig, that any bat-themed covers people had in their repertoires would be welcome, so of course Rowan went to Sesame Street for that; and then we ended on the Creaking Planks kids-birthday-party NIN cover ("Closer") where it sounded, at one point, like Rowan accidentally sang, "I want to fuck you like a teddybear." That might have been just my mishearing (they usually sing "hug" for their version -- a hilarious, sanitized, kidspeak tune, with references to mudpies and Nintendos and lines like, "Help me, I think I got a boo boo") but even if I was mishearing, it put quite an image in my mind, so I guess if I got that wrong, I don't want to know. Apparently next year is the 20th anniversary of the Creaking Planks, so if there's ever going to be more live music from the band -- who are dispersed everywhere around the lower mainland, with the biggest concentration in Nanaimo, apparently-- next year will be when it will happen. In fact, I believe I was at their first-ever gig, 20 years ago, which corresponded with the first-ever Vancouver Zombiewalk, and which had zombie-themed songs, yoking Roky Erickson, the Cranberries, Fela Kuti, and... was there some Harry Belafonte in that set? Does Harry Belafonte sing about zombies? Or was I thinking of the Kingston Trio's "Zombie Jamboree?"
Interesting that this blog and the Creaking Planks have been around almost the same length of time...
Anyhow, I think more video evidence will emerge sometime, but not as shot by me: my storage maxed out during Rowan's set and allowed me to put away my phone for awhile (the actual order of performers was Coach StrobCan't/ Minimalist Jug Band/ Rowan/ Enrico/ NO FUN, fyi). Thank you to everyone who played or came out! But in the end, I spent almost as much time onstage as I did in the audience, and it just wiped me out... I don't even remember what did Thursday night, but last night I was sitting at the Rickshaw and I could just feel my energy plummet, and contra my original plan to run back and forth between the Rickshaw and the Waldorf, found myself thinking, fuck, I've seen the BB Allin show, I've seen Kid Congo... I could be home in bed with my wife... why am I doing this to myself? There's a level below which, if you drop down that far, you just have to listen. I hit and passed that level before Kid Congo even took the stage...
I was still glad to have said hi to a few people (including Byron and Kristy-Lee of Dead Bob, bracing for a post-election US tour, and to Emilor, who I gave my second-to-last bat shirt). But in the end, I just went home. At least I didn't have to carry a bowling ball!
Actually, Al -- who I also shot a bit of video of, note -- gets the other funniest story of the night, too, which involved my song, "Bald Man with a Hat," which he covered as his first tune (I think it's the first time I've seen Al do a cover?). He stumbled on the lyrics and got, if you will, contagiously embarrassed onstage, but the thing he didn't realize was that, far from being, at first, touched and flattered by the gesture, and then disappointed when the gesture got flubbed, I was sitting in the audience not even recognizing my own song. At the start, I was, like, "Wait a second, Al is not remotely bald; why is he singing this?" (he did have a hat, at that point, but he has a very full head of hair under it). When he started referencing Doug Bennett, and how Doug used to tease his male audience members who were wearing hats by saying that men in bars with hats were bald underneath -- I was like, "Jeez, don't I have a song like this? This is a weird coincidence." But I wasn't clear until afterwards that it had been a cover of something I had actually written and sung myself -- I mean, who the hell uses the word "shnooks" in a lyric? (And I've never ever considered hair implants). It's not quite as, uh, weighty a thing as the bowling ball, but it still seems vaguely meaningful that Al was feeling bad to mess up lyrics I didn't even recognize were mine long afterwards. Ha!
Anyhow, that's it - the Alienated in Vancouver 20th anniversary gig report. I'm going to have to start "saving my bullets," as Ford Pier puts it -- there's a lot of music I want to see over the next couple of months, and a few articles I'm committed to doing, so I can't afford to waste time/ energy/ money on things that I am not really, truly enthusiastic for.Friday, November 01, 2024
Night Court has a new album! (and is opening for Kid Congo)
And BEST OF ALL, they're playing tonight at the Rickshaw, as the first opening band for Kid Congo Powers, who at least some of us were going to see anyways!!! (See my archival interview with Kid Congo here -- including vintage Bev Davies photos of Kid Congo with the Cramps. Was I supposed to correct something in that? Fuck, maybe. Oh, and see my newest interview with Bev Davies here -- my second in less than a year; see the previous one -- the Montecristo one -- here. Is it a wonder that I appreciate how prolific Night Court is?).
F.Y.P. "Predict the Past" https://recessrecords.bandcamp.com/track/predict-the-pastGuided by Voices "Game of Pricks" https://youtu.be/MjZ6HL-8WK0Ramones "Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue" https://youtu.be/rf6Yv4lMhhs?si=A3MR5Nc8U7BE_pOdWire "Fragile" https://youtu.be/fJoLkMAzq10?si=tW-VuoxqrQB0SU1KMike Krol "Fifteen Minutes" https://youtu.be/yhfMBWWZUMc?si=KhD32DTv4FteNOtX (keep in mind the song doesn't start until 20 seconds in.. great video too)
So none of these bands write exclusively short (under 2 minutes if that's what we're considering short) songs including the ones you named and many others but we did notice lots of good songs are short so that's just what came out.
When we started writing stuff which is the stuff that became Nervous Birds One + Too, that was our specific mission operative- to trim any fat and make the songs as brief as we could make them while not losing their charm or integrity. Ambitious or dumb who can say? But it's a format that has worked so far so we've sorta inadvertently stuck with it.
That's interesting (as are all your questions here so thanks!) although i wouldn't necessarily say that was our intent. The Nervous Birds stuff was experimental in that we didn't really know what we were doing and didn't even know at the time that we'd do anything with those recordings, it was only after they kind of turned out cool that we pursued making this experiment a band; as you may recall Emilor didn't even join the band until after most of that stuff was recorded due to the Covid lockdown. HUMANS! was the first thing we recorded as a band and in our "studio" that we built. Some, although not all, of the songs we had played live prior to recording which was also a first, so i would say those songs were maybe a bit more sussed out. We probably did experiment a bit more when it came time to record just to see what we'd get. For this one we've actually gone back to that i think? We have been playing some of the new songs this year but not until after we'd recorded them from what i can remember (but to be fair my memory is terrible lol)
I think I heard "Captain Caveperson" at the Green Auto gig I saw a couple months ago, but my memory is terrible too. But I'm going to be there tonight! (Then race to the Waldorf as soon as they are done to catch BB Allin and the Stabbers!).
More info about tonight's show here!
Lickin' Betty's shit! (Is this a bad idea for a title? See below)
Dear Betty Bathory:
I hate being one of those guys who pester people about set times, but people who do that are usually attempting to miss opening acts, while I am doing so in the hopes of catching two of them in different places: so when the hell does tonight's GG Allin tribute show* take the stage at the Waldorf?
Because correct me if I'm wrong, other than maybe one show at the Rickshaw opening for someone else, the show tonight is only the second time BB has played Vancouver since I wrote about "her"! (What are BB's pronouns, anyhow? Do I need to worry about this?). It's also only going to be the second time I'll be seeing, uh, "him" ("You?").
People I think are scared of your BB show: with your proclivities for smearing your (homemade) shit on people, pissing on the audience with your tiny cock, shooting IV drugs, and so forth. I think I heard someone grumbling about the cleanup...
Me, I won't miss a second chance, but there's a problem, because I've been waiting to see Night Court at the Rickshaw since they hadda pull out of that Avengers/ Pointed Sticks gig a couple years ago (my first interview with them, note), and they have been added to the Kid Congo Powers double bill (see adjacent blogpost). So my plan, you see, is to start at the Rickshaw for Night Court, bus to the Waldorf for BB, stay for some of the Ramores, because I've only seen them the one time, too, then bus back to the Rickshaw for at least some of Kid Congo!
(Who I had already had a ticket for when I realized that the BB/ Ramores show was on the same night).
I mean, it seems workable. I might even get to see some of Coverage. Haven't done two gigs in one night in a good while (one time, Bob and I saw the Judges, the Alien Boys, and Bison at three different venues in one evening!).
Hope to see you tonight, but if I'm late, I'm probably on the bus from the Rickshaw or something.
A.
PS there is an earnest Youtube folkie female who appears to actually be named BB Allin. I find this very amusing.
PPS: Note: "homemade shit" is a Fugs reference. Do you know your Fugs? I will buy you the next copy of this record I see, if not. For other people, note that Betty's shit smells vaguely like patchouli and chocolate, and you may find yourself tempted to lick it, if you get any on you. Up to you!
*People who do not know GG are directed to Todd Phillips documentary Hated; yes, the same Todd Phillips who makes the Joker films. His first movie was about GG!
NOTE: Betty says she goes on at 10 so this is PERFECT - just a bit of bus fare!