Lou Reed, Street Hassle, and Aram Bajakian night two: the songs

In many ways the high point, emotionally, of the Street Hassle performance at the VIFF Centre last night was overhearing an uber-Lou Reed fan named Dickie tell bandleader Aram Bajakian after the show a story about how, after years of following his work, he had finally gotten to see Lou in Seattle and was privileged to meet him after the show and tell him how much his music mattered to him. Lou was apparently very sweet and receptive, and Dickie got choked up telling the story; Aram was moved, too, in turn, and then they had a charming exchange about one of Lou's pedals, which Aram now owns and had with him: "Is that Lou's pedal?!" ...wherupon Dickie asked if he could pick it up, and since I was standing there, I offered to photograph him with it. Something really sweet about that moment. Someone show these to Dickie? Two variants, impossible to pick between them: 

...but if that was an impossibly touching human moment to witness, impossible to quantify -- hell, I got a bit misty writing about it just now! -- the songs were pretty fuckin' great too. My favourite moment was "Last Great American Whale," which never in a million years would I have thought they'd tackle, and which shows how fearless they were in trying to capture Lou's inflection, more-or-less speaking his way through the song. There wasn't a flub in the night. The chord structures may have been simple, as Bajakian remarked, but there's nothing simple about delivering a Lou Reed song, capturing his inflections and rhythms. They did this very, very well throughout the night, never with a syllable seeming misplaced or forced. 

"Whale" was one of two New York songs they did, the other being the night's most rocking number, "There Is No Time" They were the least-deep of the cuts offered by the band, along with "Cremation (Ashes to Ashes)," which ended up being the only song Bajakian sang himself.  

Note that any links here are just to Lou songs. I did shoot a few clips of the night, but have sent them to Aram to do with as he sees fit.  

After that, my other favourite tune of the night -- and certainly another I did not expect they'd play -- was "Families," off Lou's terrifically under-rated 1979 album The Bells. I had spun this at the bookstore where I work earlier the day, or at least side two. This is an album no one cares much about, it seems to me, unlike Street Hassle, which has some dark-horse fans out there, but they are very much of a piece, recorded a year apart, and both blessed with one seriously absurd stinker ("Disco Mystic" and "I Wanna Be Black") that makes them very hard to process as a whole, despite having some of Lou's most artful and ambitious music of the decade on them. Side two of The Bells (which has Ornette Coleman sideman Don Cherry on it; he even gets a co-credit as songwriter on one track!) is particularly astonishing (and it's the side "Families" is from). These two records are really where my interest in Lou as a solo artist begins -- completely the opposite of ARGH!!,who was in the audience both nights, and who grew up with those early Lou solo albums. There's no arguing with that sort of attachment, and I learned that his favourite number was probably "Coney Island Baby", which they did a beautiful reading of, for sure. But it's a song I just haven't fully connected with ever. I never much wanted to play football for the coach, even figuratively [and I find the album it's on weirdly produced and a bit too ornate, in a smooth pastel kinda way; it's maybe my least-favourite-sounding of Lou's 70s albums, right down there with Sally Can't Dance, different as those albums are]). I experience each of the studio albums pre-1978 as Lou trying to find his voice as a solo artist. Berlin succeeds, artistically, and Transformer succeeded commercially, but there's a who-am-I quality through the whole decade that only seems to really resolve into self-knowledge on Street Hassle. 

That's my thesis, anyhow. With Street Hassle, especially with that amazing title track (which they did, everyone who knows it waiting during the break between movements for someone to start clapping, which, impressively, only one person fell for), things get darker, richer, smarter, and we see the person who would give us Ecstasy and Magic and Loss and Lulu and such discovering his true voice (he'd found it live long before that but in terms of studio albums, they seem like they are all restlessly searching for an identity during that decade and never really finding one that wholly worked). There were still missteps post-1978 (is Mistrial his worst album, or have I misunderstood it?). And there's oddities like New Sensations, which produced two songs that were such hits back in my day that it's easy to under-appreciate the better tunes on the album (two of which were also represented tonight, "Doing the Things That We Want To" and the title track). It's actually a really good Lou Reed album, if you can forget about the singles for a bit.

There were two songs I didn't much know at all tonight; "Ennui" and "Rooftop Garden." The first is off Sally Can't Dance, one of the Lou albums I've owned and sold and do not now have, along with Coney Island Baby; the latter is off an album I have, Legendary Hearts, but I also tend to play one side of that more than the other. All three men sang at different points, with Aiden doing the most (and apparently freaking out a little when he developed an itch in his throat and had to sing through needing to cough!). 

All the members of the trio gave stellar performances. All the songs were very enjoyable, even the ones I didn't know. Bits of Stevan's and Aiden's phrasing sounded so close to Lou's at times that it was kind of eerie, really. And Aram really gets into his playing, rocking with his guitar, not in the sense of rocking-and-rolling, but in the sense of moving-back-and-forth with the music, kind of entranced. He goes deep into these songs. He would have been something to see live with Lou. He was something to see, live last night. 

Oh hey, look, someone has a video on Youtube of Lou live in Copenhagen in 2012 doing "Street Hassle" with Aram in the band... 

RIP Cris Derksen, plus Aram Bajakian on "Street Hassle", Lou Reed and Metal Machine Music

Before I get to the Lou Reed events, ongoing at the VIFF Centre, I have to give an RIP to Cris Derksen. I am saddened to learn that she was taken from us, far too young, in a traffic collision in Alberta yesterday. I wish I'd seen her live more often. I no doubt have caught her as part of some ensemble VNM or jazzfest event but never in a front-and-centre capacity. My deepest association with her playing is the cello on Bison's "Wendigo Pt. 1: Quest for Fire" -- though I don't think I ever saw her join Bison onstage for that (I would have remembered!). 

What was that Eric Dolphy quote? (It was appended to a recording of a late, but not actually the final, performance of his, as suiting the context of a posthumous release): "When you hear music, after its over, it's gone in the air. You can never capture it again." My condolences to those who knew her or worked with her. 

That said, I've come to write about Lou... Note also there are a couple of significant errors in my Straight article about Aram Bajakian's presentation of two nights of Lou Reed, apropos of night two, which is tonight: I say that the performance of the music this evening, as with last night, comes before the film, but that is not so. If you wish to see Wim Wenders' Faraway, So Close! (which is included with the cost of the ticket), you have to get to the theatre THIS AFTERNOON at 3:30, before the live music (which starts at 7:45). I've never known the VIFF to do it this way -- usually the movie plays AFTER the music -- and confess that I simply did not read the blurb. The error has remained in the article, since my editor is literally on vacation. If anyone ends up feeling cheated out of the Wenders movie, my profound apologies! 

Also, it was Stellar Regions, not Interstellar Space, that Bajakian referenced, or the non-extant portmanteau of "Interstellar Regions" that saw print, which again was 100% my bad; Bajakian said it right, and I thought he meant the other album, and "fixed" it, but bungled my own fix. The error was caught and noted, with the aid of Tim Reinert, but again, my editor is sipping Suntory and posing for shots at various Shinto shrines, so as the Japanese would say, "shikata ga nai." (The equivalent of "It can't be helped" or the more Beckettian "Nothing to be done", sometimes also given as "sho ga nai"). I have no direct access to the Straight website, unlike this one, so if there's a fuckup, there's not much I can directly do.    

Sho ga nai.

Aram Bajakian and Lou Reed, 2011-2012? 

I do think it's going to be a very special night of music this evening; I'm quite excited to take it in, especially Bajakian's reading of "Street Hassle", in particular, which is a Lou Reed song I am still in my early acquaintance with, but find really moving. Bajakian explained the inclusion of that song in particular thusly: "When I got the gig with Lou, there's a really good friend from elementary school whose parents were, I think, hanging out with the Velvet Underground in the 1960s, and then they moved to this small town outside of Boston, and that's how I met him. And he was like, 'Oh, you have to play "Street Hassle".' 'Okay, I'll check it out'. And we worked on it. I think with 'Street Hassle' and also 'Sad Song' from Berlin, they were really hard songs to play live because of the lyrical content. Like, they're so dark. I'm wondering what Vancouver audiences will make of it..." 

The lyrics to "Street Hassle" are here. To say nothing of the harrowing story told, Reed's delivery on that track is going to be pretty challenging to replicate, I suspect! Lou does that deadpan/ doesn't scan spoken thing where he jams extraneous syllables into a line that he can just bluster his way through, because he's Lou, and anything he does will count as "the way Lou does it," but someone covering the tune is in a different position! It will be interesting to see how Bajakian negotiates that. 

About the range of what Reed does, Bajakian's comment, which didn't make the Straight piece, was "he writes these beautiful, delicate songs, that have R&B influence, that have pop influence, that sometimes have cheesy lyrics, that sometimes have lyrics that just break your heart. But there's this whole other side. I look at this as a part of a complete artist's work, and for me, especially given a lot of music today, Lou wasn't afraid to show these different aspects of his output. He would have his Tai Chi master doing Tai Chi onstage with him. That was also part of his work. And so I think that's how I would see it."

Appropriately, we can expect a range of different songs tonight; the night is not *just* songs from Street Hassle -- there will also be music off Magic & Loss, Lulu, and... I don't now what else! I deliberately did not ask Bajakian what his bandmates tonight picked; I want to be surprised. 

Aram Bajakian by Art Perry last night 

I hope it's a much fuller house tonight. I assume everyone who came out last night will be there again. It turns out Metal Machine Music, live at the VIFF Centre, was much easier to listen to than I had anticipated: droning, trance-inducing, sculpted feedback that reminded me more of seeing Tony Conrad or Pauline Oliveros or even an Indian raga than listening to Lou's infamously abrasive album. I was girded for torture, expecting Swans-level volume and throbbing eardrums afterwards; I even packed extra earplugs and contemplated whether it might not be wise to double-up, which Reed's friend Art Perry, who I brought as my guest, also quipped about before the show. Instead, I was transported and soothed. This is not a complaint, but it was a surprise!

Art Perry and I agree on all that, note. He described the performance as "a wondrous night of meditative audio metal magma ...Lou lives on and he's still shaking the fat of the bourgeoisie." The band had begun playing as we were ushered in, and continued for about an hour. The performance had some drama to it, in seeing the musicians (mostly the seated Bajakian) shaking and waving their instruments in front of their amps to modulate the feedback produced, but mostly it was about deep listening. People listened pretty intently (even that worrisomely shitfaced dude who could be seen gobbling gummies while staggering about in the lobby, like he wasn't intoxicated enough: I gotta give him credit, he proved a better listener than I expected, though I do suspect he was the dude who gave a single rock-concert "Whoo! Yaah!" at one point, no doubt drawing some stinkeye from those seated around him. (To that dude: Grumble as you might about people on their high horses, man, you were not looking like a promising audience-mate; I'd be anxious just riding a bus with someone as obnoxiously loud as you were in the lobby, nevermind your colliding into me or trying to hug me like we were friends. My friends are better-behaved than that! But thanks for not being an issue once the performance started).      

Anju Singh and Aram by Art Perry

About my own "transport": I let the music take me where it would, and that ended up a sort of deep-listening trance that, uhh, some people might describe as, errrm, "falling asleep." Which is often taken as being an insult or a criticism, but it's not: my consciousness was profoundly altered and I let it happen and, I mean, I probably drooled into my chest a little, but "drool-inducing" is also not an insult when it comes to drone: I came, I slept, I drooled. (Note: I mean "came" in the sense of "I attended the event"). The closest sonic experience of recent years that I can relate it to was listening, when recovering from my surgery a few years ago, to LaMonte Young on headphones while I was opiated. Fell asleep then, too, but it's a different quality of sleep with that in your ears. My only regret/ fear about zoning out last night is worrying afterwards that I might have snored? I'm sure Art would have nudged me if I did. 

Also by Art Perry, now with Stefan Maier

Art said afterwards that he contemplated taking my picture alseep but chose not to. He could have, I wouldn't have minded, and I would post it here, if he had done. I hope he comes again tonight!

(By the way, you can see one of Art Perry's candid photos of Lou here, cuddling his pooch). 

It's going to be a good night! Tickets still available 

by Art Perry

Fresh start needed, plus a few big-deal shows

Recalibrating my life. It has been pretty cluttered this past year, with new things crammed in mindlessly and lots of unnecessary stressors. 

Rest assured, I am not walking away from writing or seeing live music. But there are lots of ways to engage with music and lots of venues for writing. 

Still, I am looking forward to the Lou Reed events this weekend (Straight article here, with a couple of errors I haven't been able to get fixed; note that the Faraway, So Close! screening is actually BEFORE the movie, not after it. Figure it out on the VIFF Centre website.)

Dead Bob, the magnificent supergroup started by John Wright of Nomeansno, plays the Rickshaw on the 23rd. More to come on that.  

I am beyond excited that the Ex is coming to Vancouver. 

And I went whole-hog on a Deep Purple ticket and am neck-deep in Purple.

More locally, I want to see Tower of Dudes on June 6, apparently doing farewell shows! Great Victoria band, kind of "Slavic Camper Van Beethoven" if that makes sense. Plus they are billed with the Campfire Shitkickers and China Syndrome. That's going to be a great local gig.

But I've written so much in the last year that I've developed chronic shoulder pain, so blogging won't be a priority for awhile. Take it easy, folks! I'll be back. 

Kitty & the Rooster, Fred Frith, phipps pt., and Daniel Romano -- gig reviews and photos

I am adding some Daniel Romano notes at the bottom!

Did a fun feature with  Noah Walker here, and very much enjoyed the Kitty & the Rooster "full band" variant last night at the WISE, though we did not stick it out for the supergroup at the end. Shirley Gnome and Jack Garton had somevery rude hand gestures to illustrate the lyrics to certain songs: scooping upwards for "Underbutt", for instance,  or doing a sort of  double-jerk-off move for "Banging on a Cock(tail drum)." It was fun to see Walker's parents in the audience, too. I don't know if I could get onstage and sing a song like "Sexercise" in front of my own folks, were they still around! (The gestures for that were very fun, too).    

As for Fred Frith, the one thing that got cut from my two features on Frith -- interview; show review from Nanaimo -- was that he saw John and Yoko's notorious gig in Cambridge in 1969-- the first time that a member of the Beatles had performed outside the Beatles, after the Beatles had stopped playing. I'd love to hear what he made of that (he didn't actually weigh in, just said he was there. But was he pro-Yoko from the outset? Is he now? I'm actually quite into Yoko, and advise anyone whose defacto setting is anti- to listen to this, say. It's practically Krautrock). 

The Vault was a marvelous room, and phipps pt. (in the first photo) were captivating, too. I don't envy people going to the Vancouver show; the quality of listening in this city sucks compared to Nanaimo! But everyone listened VERY closely, even to phipps pt (with Wobby of Negativland and local Lovage Sharrock). The band is apparently named for a location on Hornby Island.

I had been a bit unconvinced, actually, by the prospect of seeing Fred Frith doing solo guitar, but it was brilliant, very enjoyable, very musical, and fascinating to watch. In recommending shows on social media, I've told people that if they haven't Fred Frith before, they should go see him; if not, they should go see Daniel Romano. 

(Turns out that Romano was an early show, one of those things where they clear out a roomful of people so they can have a DJ set or something. It almost always seems to me that that never works for the venue -- anytime I've been to a gig that did that, there sure seemed to be more people at the early live show than the people waiting to get in for the second thing. The band also expressed some annoyance with this arrangment. I probably could have seen a big part of Fred Frith's set, if I hadn't waited to get records signed). 

Also had a real fun experiencing zipping back across from Nanaimo to downtown on the Hullo ferry. The trip across the water takes about the same amount of time but when you land, you're not an hour away from things out in Horseshoe Bay or Tsawwassen. I would do this again! 

The one weird thing that must be noted about Nanaimo is the near-complete absence of easily-accessed thrift stores. I guess the locals are all so hip and cool that they'd just hoover up anything good that came to town anyhow. I bet there are lots of shop owners in Nanaimo who make runs over to Ladysmith... every thrift store I could see on Google maps was at least a 25 minute walk out of town. 

Oh, and I crashed at a friend's and made a new cat buddy. There were two cats. I only saw the butt of one, briefly, but this guy came up and said hi to me during the night. I was glad he did.

That's about all I have to report. I am going to be trying to change my relationship with this stuff soon. Money is now a serious concern, since I have transitioned from being a fulltime VCC employee to being a part-time used bookstore guy. (At least I'm out of debt! The buyout was significant from VCC, but it's going to be an interesting few years). I have bought ahead for a couple of concerts -- most notably, Dutch punk band The Ex, whom I have wanted to see for decades. But, like, there isn't going to be quite as much of my writing about shows, I don't think (as soon as I clear a few things I committed to doing). 

One show I didn't write about at all, that I would have, happened  Saturday night, in fact. It's the reason I went to see Fred Frith in Nanaimo, because I have wanted to see Daniel Romano's Outfit for a few years now, and I absolutely love the album he's touring. (I am also really partial to side one of How Ill They World is Ordered, if you want another point of reference, but he's got a very varied musical output, not all of which has hooked me, so I'm glad to be seeing him on a tour for my favourite thing he's done so far). 

Indeed, the band was incredible. There's a real 70s-rock vibe to them, in the way they dress and attack their songs; it was even reflected in the garb of the audience, who looked like they could have come straight out of a Detroit rock show circa 1973, with moustaches and mullets everywhere. 

Romano was wearing a plaid shirt and jeans. Bassist Tommy Major, who I believe is also the leader of Tommy and the Commies, was sporting a Creem t-shirt under a vest and at one point dropped an MC5 lyric reference into a song. I think Romano actually introduced him as being from Detroit, but what I'm seeing online seems to suggest he's from Sudbury. So I think that was a joke, maybe? 

Tambourine player and occasional guitarist Carson McHone appears to be from Austin, Texas, though I think she might have moved to Canada herself (I heard her tell someone she was from Austin "originally," which suggests she's not there now). She wore a little black dress and cowboy boots and rocked her instrument as hard as I've seen anyone play tambourine before (there's a reference to a tambourine in one of Romano's lyrics on the new album which makes different sense now that I've seen her). 

Romano was very democratic in letting Carson take a lead vocal for one song, which might have been "Downhill"--which was the one on the Seattle setlist from the night before, anyhow. She had her own little merchtable niche, too (and was the merch girl last night: the band sell their own records, have no other merch person with them, and all that biz gets taken care of at the end of the night).

Finally, drummer Ian Romano sported a trucker's cap, and played like Keith Moon. He seemed the youngest of the members, and I presume is Romano's kid brother? I didn't get any particularly good photos of him but he drums like someone who loves his instrument; you'll hear that abundantly if you buy an Outfit album--the drums are a very strong presence.

I liked so many details of this show -- from Tommy taking lead vocals on the first song, "Firebreather", maybe the most punk rock song on the new album, to the way Romano would play so hard that his face would be overtaken by a grimace of horror.

The face of a great guitar solo

I also adored one of their t-shirt designs, where they riffed on that old Germs idea, "What we do is secret"; theirs was "What we do is sacred". It was a cool enough design that it crossed my threshold of size: I normally hold out for 3xl, but I had to get this. I love that there is a strong sense of, uh, "spiritual values" informing the new album. 

Here is what an AI search turned up for the image, complete with reference links: 

The design on this Daniel Romano t-shirt features his band's logo and the phrase "what we do is sacred," which centers on his personal philosophy of "Rock & Roll Magick". [1]

This concept represents the belief that music and creative expression are sacred acts that serve as a spiritual current, reconnecting individuals to something larger than themselves. [1, 2]

Key meanings behind the design include:Communal Experience: The design reflects the band's focus on music as a form of communion and a shared, almost spiritual human experience. [1, 2]

Creative Rebellion: It serves as a declaration against the "mono-agriculture of the mind"—a term the band uses to describe the modern flattening of culture into something banal and uniform. [1]

Icons & Emblems: The circular, geometric emblem is part of a broader set of mystical symbols used by Daniel Romano's Outfit. These icons are meant to be "secret signs for those who know," signaling membership in a community that values primal and immediate artistic expression. [1]

Spontaneity: The ethos behind their "sacred" work often prioritizes spontaneity and "truth" over polished perfection, viewing recording and performance as documents of a feeling rather than a product. [1]

My own thought looking at that symbol is that it is rather Rosicrucian, but who knows, maybe it's stolen from an Ontario stained glass window in an old-school diner or something. I'll ask Romano if I ever get the chance (I stupidly forgot to mention to him when I had his ear that I do some rock journalism). 

But that's all I've got: I didn't go as a witness last night; I went to dance, and I got to, especially to "Unseeable Root," one of my top three tracks off Preservers of the Pearl, and again with lyrics shot through with mysticism and magick. 

I love the whole new album, actually. Of the songs I did not know (about half the set), the one that made the strongest impression was "Boy in a Crow Skin Cape", and I was pleased it also was on the merch table. Lots was, also including two 7"s and a CD by Ancient Shapes (they've put out 3 LPs, so far, Romano told me later, but they all seem to be out of print now. That's his punk band; I haven't heard much of it, to be honest!). 

The band was in a rush to get off the stage, so I didn't get to chat much, but I got a few of my records signed (I was merciful and didn't ask them to sign everything. Carson liked that I asked her to sign in a different colour from the other members). Like I said above, my favourite of the ones I have heard is the one they are currently touring -- so if you  have the energy and inclination, I would see them at the Capital Ballroom in Victoria tonight. Great band, great show, great album, great t-shirt!  Real glad I did things the way I did. 

Fred Frith in the Straight, plus Fred Frith by ARGH!!

Please read! Share via Pebmac! FRED FRITH IS RETURNING TO VANCOUVER!!!! (And has shows in Nanaimo and elsewhere). 

https://r.pebmac.ca/https://www.straight.com/music/fred-frith-returns-to-vancouver-seditious-soccer-and-playful-perversity  

Tickets here: https://theinfidelsjazz.ca/event/fred-frith-at-the-revue-stage/ 

Fred Frith by ARGH!!

Feeding geese, plus nice Science Fiction Book Club thrift store score

Had a fun morning, poking about thrift stores and feeding Canada geese and enjoying the sunlight and the day off work, not tethered to my computer.

And I had some good luck thrifting, including a fun used doo-wop/ R&B anthology, and stumbled into a nice lot of Science Fiction Book Club Anniversary Collection hardcovers. I had to walk away from a few of them (out at BASES in New West), but this was about all I could get in my backpack, anyhow!  

I have not read all of these, but Greg Bear's Blood Music would make an amazing David Cronenberg movie: a socially awkward, obsessive scientist awakens higher consciousness on a cellular level and suddenly bodies start disintegrating, their cells breaking up and forming new shapes, in a sort of mass-scale revolution. But human consciousness survives, transformed. It's the creepiest body horror at times, but also contains a transformative meditation and an ending that takes on some pretty batshit-seeming "new" physics and a bit of the bugfuck "happy ending" quality that you find at the end of Phase IV. Recommended!

The Holdstock and Card books are good, too, and I once had a very deep affection for Harlan Ellison, especially Deathbird Stories, when I was young. Especially "Adrift Just Off the Islets of Langerhans: Latitude 38° 54' N, Longitude 77° 00' 13" W", one of his most surreal and heartbreaking stories. The title story is pretty great, too.

I sincerely hope I get to do more reading as a result of my reduced employment, but some of these will no doubt make their way to my new job at Carson Books and Records on Main, if people are interested. They'll cost a bit, though: some of these are kinda pricy (the Deathbird Stories was around $50 US on Abe, plus $20 or so for shipping... but it won't be that much in store!).  

Right now, I'm going to sit back and read Project Hail Mary. I'm only ten pages in and I'm already enjoying it much more than the movie. 

Owlbear, Hyperspace VII, and Record Store Day: a mixed bag all round (but Owlbear rocks, so there's that)

Lots one could say about people lining up overnight to get the first shot at RSD official releases... some of whom are simply capitalists looking to score things to flip, competing with actual fans. 

That does appear to be really a thing (and not just a paranoid hate-fantasy fueled by people who resent not having got the last copy of the thing they crave, wanting to blame flippers and not fellow fans): There are albums people bought yesterday that are now being sold on eBay for multiple times what they cost. Someone has Air's Moon Safari up for $640 today; it's on the list of titles that Neptoon, for instance, got in at $37. There are also people selling it for $40 or $50USD, so I'm not clear who is buying it for $640, but that's true of several sellers: A Grateful Dead box set that cost $155 CAD at Neptoon yesterday is now -- not the same copy, mind you, but still -- selling on eBay for $399 USD (with multiple other listings at lower prices, mostly in the $250 USD range). There's a Chet Baker live in Japan album that some lucky soul bought yesterday for $70 that you can now get for $394.99 (or for $94.98 if you look for a minute). 

The economics of it all are a bit dizzying, and I can see how someone who coveted any of those items for the music might resent people who coveted it for the resale value, if they knew for a fact that the person who bought the album was one such flipper... double the resentment if they lined up at 2am (or earlier) to get their hands on it... luckily for me, I don't care that much! The one time I lined up for RSD, just to have the experience, the item I was keenest to get was the Meat Puppets' Live in Montana, which I'm guessing wasn't an RSD exclusive (you can still buy it today) and which was easy to find the next day, the next week... it's true that there was something I missed out on yesterday, the Ian Dury Live in London double-vinyl, but there were only a couple of copies that made it into town, priced so highly ($74.99, imported from the UK I guess) that I'm just fine on having missed out... 

But the stuff I care about most that came out on RSD is stuff like Deja Voodoo's Cemetery, which no one is bothering to flip on eBay at all, and which, if you want it, you can probably STILL SCORE at Red Cat or Neptoon or such; it likely hasn't sold out of any store it came into. That's usually how it works for me; the coolest releases aren't the ones that people are lining up for! I kind of equally fail to understand the people who stayed up all night to get the Steely Dan RSD release (Alive in America) for $54 CAD or the people who immediately posted it on eBay for $100 USD. I guess my lack of interest in truly popular music insulates me...? 

Anyhow, I can totally understand why some record dealers have gotten disillusioned with the whole limited-edition RSD exclusive feeding frenzy. Johnny Matter at Matterhorn had a big sale yesterday, but brought in none of the exclusive new stock. There's definitely a case to be made for that mode of participation, and I'm pleased to hear he had a successful day doing that. Johnny's right, the whole manufactured-rarity/ capitalist-feeding-frenzy attribute of it is kinda bullshit...

But there WERE a few things I wanted this year, only one of which--the Dury--I could not get. The coolest turns out to be the Neil Young and Crazy Horse one pictured at the top. It is not being widely noted but "Be the Rain" on As Time Explodes was recorded at Deer Lake Park in Burnaby, one of two songs off Greendale that the Chrome Hearts did that made me a fan of that album, which I'd previously neglected. I was there both nights, so though it does not say which of the two dates it was recorded at, I was in the audience regardless, so I'm super-happy to have that song represented -- a live recording of a Neil Young song I did not know previously, taken from a show I was actually at, and now in my record collection. That's a pretty fuckin' great souvenir! 

That album was sold out in a couple of places but they had copies at Audiopile last night, so it may not be too late, if you are now coveting it too.

With some work, I also got the too-expensive live XTC album -- which has a great cover, compared to the Dury -- plus Camper Van Beethoven's complete cover album of Fleetwood Mac's Tusk, and a Marshall Crenshaw bootish thing for David M. (he's reimbursing me). That's more than enough -- usually there's between 0 and 1 items that I am excited about, so it was actually kind of a rich RSD for me, getting three records for myself. Not bad for a guy who was working the whole day, who lined up nowhere, nohow...

And then there was the Hyperspace VII festival, which I went to (after a pitstop at Audiopile, since they still had that CVB album, which Red Cat and Neptoon did not) after my shift at Carson Books and Records was done. I'd written about Owlbear for the Straight; I'm happy to see (as of writing the first version of this around midnight) the story is the #1 piece on the Straight website (which it still is this morning, which I'm also happy to see). I mean, I'm guessing it's all just tonight's Hyperspace nerds coming home and getting online, but there was only maybe 120 people there, so...?

Anyhow, glad that happened. Sad that Owlbear had hassles at the border and that they couldn't bring up vinyl -- customs must have their due. I had coveted a signed Feather & Claw more than any of the RSD releases, with Yannis' terrific artwork (WITH NO A.I. INVOLVED, though, heh, Owlbear should realize that the person they said "fuck you" to in the interview, for guessing the art was A.I., was among my first invites for my plus one. Alas, his girlfriend was sick and he couldn't make it). 

My friend who couldn't make it requested I shoot vid of people in wizard costumes (one emblazoned with cannabis leaves), who were a,steady presence in the pit, doing that circle-pit thing, waving pool-noodle weaponry, smashing their noodles against their cardboard shields, and even swordfighting.  You get glimpses of it in both Witchkiller's "Day of the Saxons" and Owlbear's "Altar of Earth." (I also shot "As Arrows Hail" from right up front, but did not turn around to capture the action behind me). Pretty hard not to love that kind of thing (not that I'm much tempted to do it myself). I joked with Katy afterwards, "Wizards in the pit are NOT the norm up here, just so you understand." 

I enjoyed Owlbear's set. There's something quirky about Katy -- her comments in the interview about not wanting to be credited for playing guitar, for example, or about being a hater (which I've seen no one ever put forth as a badge of honour before) seemed kinda self-deprecating and cynical, if taken at face value, which is odd for someone fronting a band whose songs have a heroic, uplifting aspect; in my old days being trained in Life Skills counselling, someone would have said she was not "congruent". 

She also waxed a bit cynical, maybe with her tongue-in-cheek, in telling people not to come talk to the band at the merch table (by way of inviting people to do exactly that, of course: it was sort of a "come see us at the merch table but don't talk to us" message). She further instructed the audience especially not to thank her for "representing" them. I guess she's had some unwanted weight on her; I can't really say I know what that's like, actually, but I suspect anyone who takes the stage is going to have SOME stuff projected upon them, and that there are some communities out there that really want and need to have heroes and heroines onstage, for obvious reasons. Suddenly it all starts to seem like material for a fantasy novel... Does Katy fit a "reluctant hero" archetype? Or perhaps she's more of an antiheroine...? 

Mostly it seemed like the people in the audience (or at least the ones who weren't there to dance around in wizard costumes) were just there for Owlbear's music, rather than what Owlbear represents, which was true of me, at least . I'm glad to have focused on that in the Straight piece, and guess I shall continue to do so. I mean, life is complicated, but fuckit, I got to dance a bit to "Crawl from the Carcass," the song Katy wrote about getting the fuck out of Pittsburgh. My own carcass (Maple Ridge) was different but I sure can identify with the sentiment (and yes, I pointed out the Straight piece to Rodney DeCroo, who hails from those parts).  

My dancing was pretty inhibited, in fact, compared to some nights, but it's hard to compete with wizards.

I had already talked guitar in the Straight piece but the other observations I had last night were that a) Leona is a hell of a bassist (playing a hell of a bass!) and that b) she reminds me of a headbanger I know named Allison, who I woulda shared my plus one with if I'd thought of it. 

  

All pics by me

Much as I enjoyed Owlbear, there were other miscues in the night, like full white stage lighting beteen their songs, and repeated technical difficulties with the drum kit. Event organizer Joey also said from the stage at one point (allegedly by way of introducing Owlbear, though he forgot to do that part) that it was probably going to be the last Hyperspace, at least for awhile. I would have maybe bought a T-shirt, to at least have Owlbear's name on something, but neither Hyperspace nor Owlbear had any that fit -- at least Owlbear had the excuse of border hassles. The bands with the best merch were Void Chaser and Witchkiller, but I'm not going to go around in a Witchkiller shirt, and I didn't like Void Chaser's music at all (even less than I liked Artificial Language; the best progressive band in the whole affair that I caught was Phaeton last week, by several miles). 

So it was kind of an odd night all-round, really -- but I hope Owlbear will come back at some point. I didn't enjoy them quite as much as I enjoyed Maiden back in 1983, when I was 15, but I don't regret making the comparison. 

(tho' incidentally, for clarity, I wouldn't describe myself as a "disciple" of Maiden's, which is what it says in the Straight piece; I believe that was my editor's liberty, amping up the religious angle. I see what he was doing, and I don't mind, but if I'm going to be a disciple of any heavy metal band, I'll pick the Blue Oyster Cult, thank you. They're just a bit less front-and-centre about the twin-guitar-wank aspect -- other people in the band play guitar, but with them, it's really all down to Buck, innit?). 

I don't have much else to say. Witchkiller, band name aside, were pretty good, but not entirely my thing, either; but I was still pleased to see how happy Gerald was to scoop their setlist. He's known them for 40 years...! 

And apologies to Sanctuary: I neither wrote about you nor stayed for your set, but y'all sounded good too. I had simply reached capacity. Too bad the Rickshaw hadn't!