(rehearsal space shot by Allan MacInnis: Brooke, Melissa, Jose, back-of-Tamlah's head, Tim, and Tony)
So my Asian Persuasion All Stars piece went live today!
The band members have been very appreciative. I didn't get to include a history of every member, and left out various details simply to meet my word count (which I did not end up doing, but there's always a question of how much over you'll be allowed to go).
Unmentioned by me, Ron Yamauchi had what the band described as a country song, "Take the Train Away", but having peered at the lyrics over Tamla's shoulder, I could make neither heads or tails of them: which train? To be honest, my mind went to Japanese Canadians being shipped out by train to internment camps in the interior of the province in the early 1940s, except Ron's not nowhere old enough for that to have been a childhood memory of his; if he were indeed writing about such a politically charged moment in Canadian history, he was doing so very obliquely. Which complicated matters: if I mentioned the song, I would have had to ask him to explain it!
I also made little mention, in the version that saw print, of Brooke Fujiyama's "Petrichor", which seemed clearly the least political song of the night, but my strongest impression relating to that song, was how walking to their studio, all I could smell was the East Van chicken rendering plant, whereas emerging, I was treated to that very rain-on-pavement smell that gives that song that title. It only lasted a block before the stench of chicken carcasses took over, but it was a very welcome aroma!
And of course, I didn't really do justice at all to Norine Braun. She wasn't present at the one rehearsal I was able to attend, but the issue was again more one of word count: she's an accomplished singer songwriter in her own right, but spending more words on that would have meant trimming something else out, which I did not want to have to do.
If it's any consolation, there was someone even dearer to my heart who did not make the article: myself. Because the original conception of the piece was to get into a longtime grievance I have had about being mistaken for Stephen Hamm. It came up quite organically in the interviews, and seemed at least possibly relevant! But I am not in there, Hamm is not in there. If I'd been blogging it, it would have been!
The initial draft (over double the requested word count) took the time to set it up: both Tony Lee and Ron Yamauchi, I took pains to explain, were at the notorious Slow show at Expo 1986, the one that led to both singer Tom Anselmi and bassist Stephen Hamm dropping trou in disrespect of unpopular Socred Premier Bill Bennett, which further led to the remainder of the showcase getting cancelled. Yamauchi relates that he had a press pass from the Peak at SFU, so he knows he was tehre, but he wasn't up front, chanting "Expo sucks" with rest of the crowd. By contrast, Soreheads singer Rob Elliott, now based in Toronto, got arrested, Lee told me. "It was supposed to be a whole two-week Expo, a local independent showcase, and then it got wacky, the whole thing got cancelled, and everyone was upset. Rob was sort of crazed and yelling, though he's kind of harmless. But they took him away, and when he was taking him away, his best friend Steve Bentley yelled out, 'Do you want me to tell your Mom?' So that was really fun!"
Telling that story allowed me to at least set up the whole Hamm thing, when we got to the bit about members of Asian Persuasion All Stars being mistaken for each other, because I got to explain that I was frequently mistaken for Hamm, and occasionally also taken for other men of onetime girth, including Ty Strangelhold, Alex Varty, Geoff Barton and the former guitarist from Aging Youth Gang. I don't think I look anything like any of these men; we belong to, maybe, the same rough category (large white males of a certain age), but that's not a matter of racism, but rather a tendency to file people of similar appearance into broad categories, which means occasionally reaching into the file for one person and pulling out another. I mean, sure, Eric and Tony don't look much alike either:
But Hamm and I, at least in my mind, don't either. He's about a foot taller than I am, for one thing. He has a moustache, which I don't. Tim Chan actually observed that Hamm and I do share more physical attributes than he and Eric and Tony, in part of the interview that did not get used, but in the end, I couldn't justify using any of this. Not even this charming photo:
Actually, the more I look at the thing, Tim's got a point: we do look a little alike. More than he and his bandmates do, anyhow. I still think there's something to it, really, this idea that we file people in categories, which sometimes means imperfectly identifying who is who; Eric and Tony are both drummers in independent local bands of Asian background, roughly of the same body type, so people getting them confused with each other at least COULD be some feature of categorical perception, of the same type that leads people to try to talk Theremins with me...?
Actually, it seemed more plainly racist (as well as a much more severe failure of perception) that Tim would be mistaken for Tony or Eric, mind you, since he REALLY looks nothing like those two (and plays a different instrument, to boot). But in the end, it just wasn't worth taking up the wordcount; I was satisfied just to represent Tim and Tony on the issue, and leave my own grievances out of it. Tim's pretty articulate, after all.
So Ron, Brooke, Norine, that's my defense: yes, I wrote less about you than I might have, but I also cut MYSELF out of the story! (And a perfectly charming Slow/ Expo 86 anecdote to boot, which people would have enjoyed -- Tony sure got a chuckle out of telling me the "Do you want me to tell your Mom?" thing).
Hope people dig it anyhow!
See y'all Friday at the Fox! (Tickets here, Skaboom! video here).
Oh, and China Syndrome plays Victoria the next night, at the Mint, by the by!
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