Buddies Vancouver was a blast! (photos, links to vids to come)

 In reverse order! Photos! Awesome night! Nick ruled but everything was delightful, and Brock did "Pink Turns to Blue!" More to come. 

Hot spaghetti: Blue Horse Opera and The Big Gundown, tonight at the VIFF Centre

(Note that there are some problems with this promotional material, in that Eli Wallach was the Ugly and he isn't in the film in question. Lee is the BAD in in TGTBTU, and he is the protagonist of The Big Gundown, so it's wrong on more than one level! But they're trying... and "Mr. Ugly Comes to Town" is actually pretty good copy, even if it's WRONG...). 

For them that understand: there is a remarkable event happening tonight at the VIFF Centre. I have written about it HERE. Here is some relevant realia! 

I also talk to Alex Cox about Straight to Hell here, by the way. And Zander Schloss here, though I see my editor has accidentally credited himself with the article (actually seems to be a software glitch -- it is being fixed!!). Check out the full soundtrack for The Big Gundown here, but that's not what Rick will be playing!

Event details here! 

Bev Davies' Hüsker Dü pics, plus Greg Norton + Büddies TONIGHT, with Scott Reynolds and the SLIP~ons! Article roundup and Brock Pytel mini-interview

L to R, Scott Reynolds, Greg Norton, Jon Snodgrass, David Jarnstrom, image courtesy Jon Snodgrass

Never did get to interact with Greg Norton, in town tonight for the Büddies gig at LanaLou's, which is sold out (might be a trickle of tickets at the door but if you aren't in the first 20 people in line, you are prolly too fuckin' late, pal). Was hoping to ask him about this photo, taken by Bev Davies when Hüsker Dü played the Smilin' Buddha June 7, 1982. I showed this to Brock and he was, like, "He's just a baby!"

Greg Norton by bev davies, June 7 1982 at the Buddha, not to be reused without permission

The thing about that photo is, given the absence of the signature moustache, I wasn't sure it was Greg! It's like trying to identify Eric Bloom without his shades. Bev didn't know for sure, either, so I spent about fifteen minutes Googling "Hüsker Dü 1982" and looking for images of Greg without a 'stache; eventually I found one, from January, which helpfully seems to have him wearing the exact same shirt (but the collar is turned up). Images from 1981 also have Greg without the moustache, and there are other images out there of him with his moustache from 1982, maybe a bit later, so this must have been the year he grew it? Has he ever been without it since? Does shaving his moustache immediately confer welcome anonymity? Did he grow it back because now he's back in the music game? (see also: Ultrabomb). 

...I mean, maybe he'd have written back if I'd asked about being a chef? The moustache is no doubt his blue butterfly. It gets tedious having to talk about a mere physical feature instead of, like, your life's work or such:"Who cares, I want to talk about the moustache!" 

I could see it getting tedious. 

By the by, this "is this the guy" feature is not an uncommon phenom when working with Bev, asking her about photos from over 40 years ago. I will end up interviewing someone specific (like Steve Shelley, recently) and asking her if she has a photo of the non-main member of a band that person was in (the Crucifucks, in Shelley's case), and then we have to figure out, "Okay, so is this the guy?" Sometimes they're immediately recognizable (Steve Shelley has his signature Beatles "do"), but often, no so much. Speaking of the ALL/ Descendents camp, which we will be doing below, I called Bev earlier this week to ask, "Hey, do you have any photos of the Real McKenzies when Karl Alvarez was in the band?" She goes into her archive and writes me back with an image, and goes, "Is this the guy?" And even though I've just been chatting with Karl Alvarez, he's 14 years older now and has a grey beard, and the guy in the photo Bev found doesn't have any beard at all (and his hair ain't grey; 14 years makes a big difference between ages 47 and 61, apparently). So I end up Google-image-searching "Karl Alvarez Descendents" and "Karl Alvarez ALL" and comparing and sending a photo back to her. "I dunno, is this him?" "I dunno." "Looks a bit like him... Jeez, I guess I have to ask Scott."

Sometimes the stuff Bev finds is very unique. Not even Bob Mould could decisively explain this one: 

Bob Mould by bev davies, June 7 1982 at the Buddha, not to be reused without permission

Here's what Bob said about it when we talked:

Bob: Maybe at soundchecks we would do stuff - we would just switch around on instruments. I would never say that I'm a drummer. I can keep a beat, but I wouldn't say I could play drums. So that was probably the soundcheck, and I was probably just goofing around, and Bev happened to get an amazing photo. I'm really grateful to have it, it's sort of a crazy photo. It's very uncommon!

This would also have been a dumb question to ask Greg Norton about, but whatevs, he's on tour anyhow, dude is busy. Here's one of Bev's shots of Bob on his usual instrument from that night. There's a signed photo on the wall at Red Cat that some of you might notice, which is a companion to this...

So I didn't interact with Greg. I did talk to Scott Reynolds, which ended up (as with Steve Shelley) in two huge features on the Straight website, here and here. Here's  Büddies drummer David Jarnstrom's complete photo, which got cropped by the Straight above the "People Ruin Everything" sticker, which is my favourite detail: 

I did check to see if Bev ever shot the Doughboys. Nope! She found a poster but it was post-Brock, prolly 1996, witha different drummer... Brock reports on times the band played here with him on the kit: "Our first show in Vancouver with the Doughboys was with Fang (from San Francisco) at the old location of the Backstage Lounge (I think that's what it was called. It moved to Granville Island). We also played the Town Pump when I was still in the band, and there was another show with Descendents at the Starfish (when it was Club Soda I think)." Check your rolls, folks, if you think you were there! 

But I have one more thing to transcribe; here is my mini-interview with Brock, which took place at LanaLou's a couple months ago. My non-mini interview with Brock is here, dealing with his time in the Doughboys and elsewise. See also my complete Chad Price interview here, which is tangentially related. The SLIP~ons are great, so don't come late: doors are at 8. I can't wait! 

Brock and Shockk by me

Allan: So you were saying that I should get the new album Scott recorded with Bill Stevenson? 

Brock: You've gotta get a copy of it. I don't know what to say about it. I haven't been floored by a record like that for a long time: it was so unexpected. You know when you get a record and you're sitting on the couch, like, curling up and reading the lyrics? And I'd just come from seeing him, and obviously he's great solo, but I hadn't heard these songs done up like that. You really get The Last influence. 

Allan: The last what?

Brock: You know, The Last, that band from LA? There's a bit of that, a bit of a weird Meat-Puppetsy thing going on... you'll have to listen to it and tell me what you think, because I don't know how to describe it! I sent one song to Kendall, you know Kendall from Actors, and she said it was like the Beach Boys meets Elliot Smith! (laughs).

Allan: Tell me about your experience at Büddies Fest in Tillsonburg. How was it? Did you sing some of Grant's songs? 

Brock: On Friday, I sang a couple of songs with Greg and his band, which is, like, Snodgrass and David Jarnstrom. You'll meet those guys. I did "2541" on Friday night. Basically everyone was just getting up and singing, jumping in. And Snodgrass announced that I was going to play drums, which I totally hadn't prepared for at all, so I kinda jumped in and did that. I played "Green Eyes" and sang it. And then at the end of the night Finny McConnell from the Mahones and also the first guy from Ultrabomb showed up and they did "These Important Years" and "New Day Rising," I think?

Allan: Were you on drums?

Brock: No, I was just on the side, at that point. Jarnstrom took over on the drums but then, he was sorta doing this to the mic [Brock gestures to indicate that Jarnstrom is nodding towards the mic], because he wasn't going to sing in that song, so I grabbed the mic and I yelled the yelly parts, and Greg was just laughing his head off, because I totally blew my voice out. I wasn't planning to do that! So that was a really fun time. 

Allan: That's awesome, man. 

Brock: Saturday I sang with Rad Owl, which is a Minneapolis band that Jarnstrom plays in. They're kind of... I'm not sure how to describe them. They were big Doughboys fans when they were younger. And Dave's first band ever was a Doughboys tribute band in Mankato Minnesota, so I did a Doughboys song with them, the same song I did with Snodgrass' band last time they were here.

Allan: What song was that?

Brock: "I Won't Write You a Letter" from the second Doughboys record. Sang that with them. It was a lovely experience. Rusty was supposed to play that weekend, but they weren't able to because of parenting stuff with Ken, right (vocalist Ken McNeil). So they ended up playing the next week after Büddies at the same venue, and then they had a couple of festival dates. And Ken posted after that that he was really sad, he'd been looking forward to the whole festival experience of meeting bands and people and hanging out, like we always do. It made me realize how amazing Büddies was, because there were people from Minneapolis, Raleigh, Ohio, Chicago, the state of New York... a dude came in from the Netherlands! It was epic: friends gathering, drinking, every night... I felt like I was gonna cry every 20 minutes, you know? A super emotional time. Hopefully we can get some of that vibe in Vancouver!

Jon and Scott by David, I think!

A final note and a final Bev Davies photo. I actually left the Grant Hart show I saw early, at the Lamplighter some 20 years ago, because I got judgy about his attitude. He hassled some fans for clapping along to his songs, for instance, stopping his playing and calling them out during "It's Not Funny Anymore," saying something like, "Hey, cut that out, you weren't at the rehearsal and you're not in the band!" I find myself thinking about that moment now every time I am at a show -- Neil Young was the most recent example -- where some dweeb is clapping along slightly out of time and kinda interfering with the music, like: "Jesus, fella, I'm here to hear Neil Young, not you!" I'm sure it was even more disconcerting for Hart, given he was playing solo to an intimate room, so the clappers were probably affecting his own sense of timing, getting into his head. Years later, I would see a solo Kris Kristofferson show where he also shut down the audience clapping, maybe a bit more graciously but less memorably/ wittily asking people not to, saying something like, "It doesn't work with me." I have come to appreciate why one might say that. Grant maybe was a bit bitchy about it, but it was pretty witty, I must acknowledge now... and maybe called for?  

I also thought Hart's blowing off "Hare Krsna" that same night was a bit offputting, since I love that song, but it was definitely also done with a certain wit, Hart basically telling the audience that the song was just a Bo Diddley ripoff with some chanting and tambourines thrown in (or words to that effect; it was 20 years ago). He played a couple chords of it and then shrugged, "And that's all you're going to get of that" (or words to that effect). Not many other details from shows I saw 20 years ago stand out quite so vividly. 

So RIP Grant Hart. I wish I'd stayed the whole night! Thanks for all the great songs you left with us. Maybe there will be a giant singalong to "Hare Krsna" tonight. Am I the only person who wishes for that? 

By the way, other than Bev and I, no one has seen this photo ever, I don't think: 

Grant Hart by bev davies, June 7 1982 at the Buddha, not to be reused without permission. 

Seeya tonight!