The Dwarves vs. Blag Dahlia Acoustic, with Sgt Saltpeter, Ty Stranglehold, Philly Roach and more

Dwarves (Mike, Blag, Sgt. Saltpeter visible). Plus that's Ty Stranglehold in the audience with glasses and hair (as opposed to the guy with glasses and no hair!). 

All photos this time out by Allan MacInnis, but Bob Hanham has better ones!

Quite the weekend! 

Potbelly's singer sounded enough like Jello Biafra that, hearing them being piped in live (I presume) at the merch area, a friend of mine asked, "Is this the Dead Kennedys?" I'd been having similar thoughts, but more like, "Is this a Jello project I don't know? Tumor Circus, maybe?" ...because I know my Kennedys, and knew it wasn't them. I had been impressed by their stage presence and fierceness of playing -- but had wandered merchwise, because I had not perused the merch well enough at that point (there was a LOT of it) and, y'know, I've seen a lot of punk rock at this point; I'm a jaded old guy who mostly listens to reggae and prog these days, so what do you expect? 

Merch area! 

Weirdly, hearing the music in the merch area and discovering from Ty Stranglehold that it was, in fact, still Potbelly that I was hearing made me go back and appreciate them more. Real good band, and as a fat occasional pot user, I must say: great name!    

Bob (the photographer on the right) shoots Potbelly

Stranglehold's band Knife Manual -- see the interview here -- was up next, and seeing them raised an interesting question: What is Ty looking at when he sings? He's got the most thousand-yard-stare of any singer I've seen, a weirdly nonspecific glare (might have something to do with not having his glasses on?). The band were as tight and fast as you'd expect, and did a Big Boys cover that I got wrong on Facebook ("We're Not in it to Lose": I am a Fat Elvis man, myself, and it was definitely a Skinny Elvis song, as is much else on the Big Boys tribute that Ty curated) and a Dicks cover ("Dicks Hate the Police," with what sounded like slightly modified lyrics). I caught a clip of a couple songs on vid. Great to see them, got my 7" signed. I think my favourite original of theirs is "Back in the Cellar," which has a real catchy chorus; I'm also partial to songs about cellars and basements, having had a nightmare once where I was the janitor of a haunted church (or something) where one of my jobs was to do a sort "routine maintenance exorcism" of a room downstairs that housed a great evil. I hated that part of my job, so seldom went down there, which meant the evil kept growing bigger, more powerful, until one day I was standing outside the door of the room and there was like this glowing light out the bottom and a strange humming sound from within and I knew I had fucked up bigtime. Rooms with "evil in the basement" (The Babadook, say) have always resonated with me (also, I used to teach in a basement, and going down in the elevator would often find myself humming a certain Ramones song). Catchy song, in any case. And I want to sit down with the lyrics for "Renovict Arnold," as well -- the first song in the vid -- which seems to be about gentrification in Victoria and its impact on the scene, but the words are not online. Is there a lyric sheet in the 7"? I should check. 

I got no decent photos of Knife Manual. Talk to Bob! I did get a fun shot of Stranglehold's Team Shitty vest, however. 

ATD ("A Total Disappointment") were really tight and fast too. They're a band I don't know as well as I might, since I've apparently seen them a few times now (!). The singer sports a jaunty moustache that reminded me of Gavin MacInnes who, whatever else may be said about him, does have a good moustache; perhaps this is why the guitarist wears a Fuck the Proud Boys t-shirt? The band did a cover of the Rebel Spell's "4:30 AM," which they had done on the Rebels Sing compilation. Again, very tight, fast, proficient, a great band, really, but like I say, I've seen a lot of punk rock at this point... old, jaded, craving complexity... King Crimson, Zappa, maybe even some Talking Heads... there is not much of Adrian Belew in this band. Which is fine, but that's where my listening tends these days. 

Then came the Dwarves. Vid caught of some vintage stuff -- that's OG member Sgt. Saltpeter on bass -- he's the fellow on the back cover of Blood, Guts and Pussy -- and new guy Mike on guitar, and a drummer whose name I did not get. Blag seems altogether too relaxed onstage for the kind of music the Dwarves play; even a half-nude streaker stage diving into the audience didn't faze him (not sure what would, really -- I think he'd grin and raise his eyebrows at all manner of debauchery and depravity, but, like, he's met GG Allin, so...). 

And speaking of male (near-)nudity, a bit later, a HeWho who was not The HeWho joined them onstage in costume, swirling his silk around until he exposed himself proudly and Blag tickled his pouch, of which I got some photos (Bob was sidelined at that point, having been invited to shoot from the wings, which means that I got an angle he missed).

Fun as all this was, none of this was as fun as the next day at LanaLou's, where the Campfire Shitkickers' lead singer Philly Roach (whose tattoos bore a striking similarity to the previous night's HeWho's) did a short acoustic opening set that included SNFU's song about bulimia ("You Make Me Thick," the first song of his I caught video of) and a cover of Warren Zevon's "Carmelita" which was rewritten so that the main character/ narrator is basically Mr. Chi Pig. There's an official video for that, though one lyric gets changed and only broken out, Philly explained later, for live performances; I won't tell you which, however, because Philly omitted it from the recording for a reason, lest it someday be misunderstood as a slag on a friend of Chi's. Entertainingly, it involves the line about selling what has variably been represented as a Smith Corona (in Zevon's original recording) and as a Smith and Wesson in the Linda Ronstadt and GG Allin versions, in all cases being done as a precursor to scoring drugs. How many variants on a single lyric can you have?

But Philly's is my new favourite, and that moment in particular, and that song as a whole, ended up the most delightful and probably the most memorable bit of the whole weekend. And Blag hadn't even started his Ralph Champagne set yet!

Philly! What the fuck is Glizzy, by the way? 

I dearly hope that we will get another chance to see a Ralph Champagne concert in Vancouver, even moreso because I missed out on getting the LP (I'd only scraped up enough cash for The Dwarves Are Young and Good-Looking, which happily was on their merch table; it's become a bit hard to find otherwise). Blag's set was brilliant and funny and rude and chatty and low-key, everything you could hope for. Blag invited us to request Dwarves songs ("I can play some of them!") but didn't know the one I shouted out for, "I Masturbate Me" ("that's a Josh Freese song, though the words are mine, of course. He gave me this surf instrumental and I'm like, 'What am I gonna do with this?'"). Blag also couldn't play "Contraband," which a few people wanted to hear -- my favourite off the Ralph Champagne album that I've heard, though "Lolita Goodbye" is pretty special, too. Probably the funniest song he did was also the most politically incorrect, a tune called "This Jihad," which was basically a country song from the point of view of a radical Islamist who gives up the Jihad because his girl has died. There was a very, very politically incorrect verse sung (again, only for live performance purposes; he must read the room carefully first) in an uber-faux-Arabic -- which I am SURE would piss a lot of people off, but in the convivial environment of LanaLou's, caused no more harm than making a few people spit out their drinks laughing. Blag's kind of fearless -- I guess he has faith in his own wit, which is considerable, as a device by which to extricate himself from bad situations. Does it ever not work? I think he could charm a rattlesnake; he certainly charmed me. 

Note: I am unclear on writing this whether the song "This Jihad" pre-dated the hacking of the Dwarves' website by jihadists (!) but you can read more about that here. 

Billy Hopeless was at the table, too, and stoked on the upcoming Black Halos show. I might do something more on that later, so I'm holding stuff back, but it was fun that Blag knew Billy and mentioned him a couple of times in his set. He's even namechecked in the video I shot. 

It was fun being at the cool kids' table for a change -- Blag and Billy both sat with us, as did Bob Hanham and newly-tonsured Cat Ashbee, who probably has great shots, too. It was funny, as soon as I suggested to Blag that we get a photo with Billy, suddenly all three of us were snapping shots. The above is mine... 

Two terrific days for me -- glad I got to see the Dwarves again. I think, in fact, I've now seen the Dwarves enough times (this was my third), but if Blag ever comes up for an acoustic show again, I am there. Maybe I'm showing my age? 

I still whooped like a teenager for "I Will Deny," though. May that never change!