Terrific night at LanaLou's: a gathering of friends and family and keen supporters of the local scene, with each band doing marvelous things and a very positive full house taking it all in. The Van Divas, in matching costumes and sparkly boots, started out the night around 8:30 -- early for LanaLou's -- with soulful R&B and a particularly keen reading of "Everyday People." Each of the three singers took at least one song; I gather their names are Jenifer, Barb and Christine; I had thought one of them was Jazzy Zircon but I guess I was wrong!). Birthday girl Christine Best, one of the co-celebrants of the night, is on the far side in the photos I shot...
R&B is not normally my kind of music, but I loved what the Van Divas did -- in many ways the best-sounding band of the night (though alas, the Rolling Stones cover I shot of theirs was nowhere as fun as said Sly Stone song). Mike van Eyes, normally an extrovert, was surprisingly restrained, playing keys for them (I sure do wish the Trespassers had put out an album before nearly everyone in the band passed on -- Howard Rix, Brian Goble, Jon Card. Is it just Mike left?). Didn't know the guitarist... the ladies were the stars tho'...
Second band Stiff Middle Finger did mostly, as befits their mandate, Stiff Little Fingers covers (like "Suspect Device" and "Alternative Ulster," video'd here; frontman Danny Nowak hadn't quite blasted the barnacles out of his throat at this point in the set, as you can hear in his spoken intro, but they were still two of the best songs of the night in terms of enthusiasm of delivery, though "Wasted Life" at the end was singularly great, too). Happily, they don't only do Stiff Little Fingers; at one point, Danny asked drummer Randy Bowman -- celebrating a birthday along with his partner, Christine -- if he had any old time punk classics he was itching to play and Randy, by way of answering, laid down that distinctive beat for "New Rose" (they did "Disco Man," too, right after; Danny is partial to the Damned, especially Machine Gun Etiquette). There was a rewritten, updated "I'm So Bored With the USA" in their set as as well, and one Undertones song (but I forget which, now). Danny is very appealing and charismatic, very easy to watch, and "I'm So Bored With the USA" is as close to seeing an original song sung by him since I saw the Spores, once, in the 1980s. He's truly an under-appreciated frontman and one of Vancouver's smartest lyricists (incidentally, you can buy a great Spores comp here; the best Vancouver punk CD you probably don't have).
The guitarist of the band, Mike Davies, would later take the stage with the Enigmas, so the Moonlighters gave him a break, going third on the bill; drummer Tony Lee, snazzily-dressed as ever, was the life of the party on their cover of Joan Jett's "Bad Reputation," which has a particularly snappy drum pattern. They had the widest range of material to draw from -- I think it was all covers too, but there's a big gap between Ms. Jett and the Band's "Ophelia," say (which I shot vid of). Coco, the singer -- Ed Hurrell tells me she is sister to Chris Crud, who was in the audience -- reminded me a bit of Janet Leigh (in terms of her appearance; I didn't know until I wrote this that Janet Leigh was also a singer). She wore the most hats (and went through three costume changes!) during the night, performing (red dress), tending bar (in a Braineater shirt) when Lana went on a liquor store run, and later bringing out a tray of birthday cupcakes (in a vintage Scramblers tee) for those who stayed to the very end (I got a strawberry one; so did Gord McCaw. Didn't notice which cupcake David Jacklin snagged. They'll have photos of the night, too!).
[Random observation: Are self-disparaging names in punk mostly a male phenomenon? There are women who take noms de punque, of course -- Alice Bag, Jade Blade, Lydia Lunch -- but if you see someone with a name involving a word like Shithead, Useless, Wimpy, Pinhead, Snotface -- you can probably safely gamble the bearer is male; there's no "Susie Shithead" or "Sally Snotface" that I'm aware of. Women seem more likely to play up, on the other hand, being somewhat dangerous or evil -- Betty Bathory, Poison Ivy, the aforesaid Ms. Blade...].
Finally, the Enigmas kicked things off with their traditional reading of "You're Gonna Miss Me," with Adam Payne on bass and Randy again on drums not really pausing at all while Mike had a guitar mishap during that song and needed to scramble for fresh wires and such (Chris might have gotten involved in that, actually). Their set also included a cover of the MC5's "Call Me Animal," a song about Charles Manson ("Charlie"), and their two biggest hits, "I Was a Teenage Barnacle" and "Windshield Wiper" (which I got superb video of). There was a very happy audience, dancing away -- including Betty Bathory and Talesha Zimmerman -- and plenty of members of the previous bands who had stuck around, to be held rapt by Paul's astonishing charisma. Has he ever acted? His command of his facial expressions and his ability to just grip you with a look or a gesture are really awe-inspiring. He is one compelling dude.
So: sorry to Rong and Crummy -- I bet that was fun, too -- but I feel like I made the right choice, tonight. Happy birthday, Randy and Christine! (And thanks for the free t-shirt! [caveat to fellow receivers: the red dye bleeds and you should soak it in cold water with a half-cup vinegar and a half-cup salt before washing it, to lock the dye!). Feels like it's been weeks since I hit LanaLou's, but I was reminded once again of how warm, welcoming, and community-minded a venue it is. Glad I went!
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