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.
"Yorick," be Erika Lax
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