Black Halos by way of LanaLou's: two fun shows in one day

Talesha held us a table, so Adam Kates and I had a "pre-game show" en route to the Rickshaw, at LanaLou's, for the weekly Mike van Eyes Rock 'n Roll Jamboree. She's at every gig, so she ends up in photos. I am not stalking Talesha.

With apologies to all the fine music we saw today, my favourite thing was a guy named Randy leading "Swingin' Doors" by Merle Haggard, one of the most entertaining country songs ever. But I'm very partial to that song, which I first saw covered by Eugene Chadbourne with Han Bennink and Robots on Fire in a raucous jam at the Cobalt. Sometimes country music actually has some wit to the lyrics, and when it does, there's a good chance it's a song by Merle Haggard. 

We missed a lot of the virtuoso guest star, Paul Pigat, today, but caught a few of his songs, near the end of the set. We'll be able to see him in a proper full format next week at the Rickshaw, opening for Los Furios, anyhow! (My old feature on them here; here's something else I did with Paul awhile back -- a man on everyone's shortlist of the best guitarists in Vancouver... 

Meantime, my favourite photos were of one of the other jamboree guests, Jennifer Styles of the van Divas, who apparently play with some regularity somewhere... she told me, I know she did, but... I trusted I could look it up later, and now learn that they do not have an easily findable link for me to post... anyhow she did some fine old school soul singin'...

Shortly thereafter, Talesha and Adam and I meandered through a couple blocks of urban despair to the Rickshaw, for another soulful, muscular opening set with the Bad Beats; I told Bad Beats co-founder Adam Payne (the evening's other Adam) afterwards that I'd shot "Knock Yourself Out" and he told me it was the first song they ever wrote together ("and it's still our best," chuckling as he said this). 

Followers the Real Sickies had an entertaining stage presence and kept things moving, but I made no notes and remember no songs. I did, however, take some photos!

Then came the Black Halos. I have seen a few different versions of Billy in my day, from "Godlike rock charisma" Billy (which caught me off guard back in 2020) to "obnoxious drunk guy throwing things at audiences and blathering too much" Billy, and had wondered which we would draw. Billy is not ON a spectrum, he IS a spectrum. But considering the steady drainage on the onstage bourbon bottle, he did a pretty amazing job fronting the Halos last night -- charismatic, in control, on point, and yet still kind of sleazy and debauched, as befits him. I enjoyed the songs from their newest album the most -- "A History of Violence," "Better Things" -- but I only got video of the (Vancouver live debut?) of "Capt. Moody" and enjoyed the energy of "Some Things Never Fall," which got a big response from the crowd -- lots of dancing and fist pumping and singing along. I was glad that people got to enjoy themselves, since, as the tour manager explained, this was a one-off, fly-them-out-for-a-west-coast show; there are no other tour dates -- the other guys are heading back to Ontario today, leaving Billy here. Must be kind of bittersweet! 

I don't have much else to report -- after an opener of "Shooting Stars" and "A History of Violence," Billy did a cute onstage "Happy Birthday to You" to a couple members of the audience, with a bemused Rich Jones smirking beside him (Rich watches Billy like he's wondering if he's gonna have to intervene). Billy will sometimes sing Happy Birthdays as Facebook messages to his social media friends, but this is the first time I've seen him do it onstage... it's actually a really sweet thing he did! Bet the people he was singing to had fun with it. 

That was fun to see, but my two favourite notes of the night are otherwise: the last time I saw anyone pass a whisky bottle into the audience, it was Shane McGowan, with the Pogues, sharing stage at the Commodore with Joe Strummer. But he was like, passing it around; Billy just shared a swig with a tall blonde then got it back ASAP. Still: he's on a shortlist with Shane, which is a pretty cool place to be. 

Also, while it is an old joke, when Billy introduced the first encore, "Third Generation Nation" (one of two covers at the end of their set, the other being the Misfits' "Where Eagles Dare"), saying that it was by the "Master Bators," I wondered if there were some suburban squares -- y'know, punk noobs or scene voyeurs drawn by my article or something -- who know nothing of the Dead Boys and thought maybe the Halos were covering a song by a garage group actually CALLED "the Masturbators." Because surely there was a group once by that name? 

(If you want to check, Google that one at your own risk). 

Real fun night in any case -- the Billy you get, the smoker you drink. Or something like that!!! 

Hey, didn't I see the woman there eating a corpse onstage at a Betty Bathory show once? I feel like I've seen her before... Graffenstein Monster, do I remember that name correctly? Maybe not.