Guitars! Guitars! -- the Vancouver New Music Festival, plus Bixobal and No Neck Note

Guitar freaks by advised: just a few days before Nels Cline returns to town with Scott Amendola's band, Vancouver New Music will be having its festival, featuring some of the most significant guitar improvisers in the world. Sir Richard Bishop, James Plotkin, Rene Lussier, Bill Frisell, Keith Rowe... I can't list them all, but it's gonna be big. Even VNM's recent Some Cats from Japan show sold out the venue, so anyone who likes guitar music (particularly CHALLENGING guitar music) should buy tickets early - a pass for all four days costs about as much as you'd pay to see Frisell alone at a larger venue. I'll be mannin' the merch table for the first and last night, and attending the middle two -- so I'll see you there!

No Neck Blues Band fans should also take note: the first issue of Bixobal will be kickin' around the city soon, with a huge interview I did with Dave Nuss of that band, around about when they last played here. It's particularly exciting in that Dave and I discuss at some length the rather negative review that Alex Varty gave of their show -- I'm sure Alex will get a kick out of it! The issue also features, I'm told, "the first installment of Climax Golden Twin Rob Millis' column 'Talking Machine,' in which he talks about 78 rpm records and Korean ones; an interview with Alan Sondheim on his group All-7-70 (which recorded for ESP-Disk) and his solo material (which has been released by Fire Musuem and Qbico), plus a special review section covering his discography." There will be the usual reviews and so forth, plus "book dealer and artist Dave Hornor gives us the run down on books by Tuli Kupferburg of The Fugs," which should be cool (I've always liked Tuli). "There'll also be part one of former Sun City Girl Sir Richard Bishop's Indian travelogue from this summer."

Sounds pretty good, eh? Guitars, cool reading... we're easing you into the winter as gently as we can.

Upcoming gigs and articles: the Furies, DOA, Terry Chikowski, Nels Cline

I'm excited: Chris Arnett of the Furies, one of Vancouver's first and most energetic punk bands, will be putting the group back together for a Vancouver show, opening for DOA on February 10th. Anyone who saw Arnett with his second group, the Shades, at the Vancouver Complication gig knows that this is one not to be missed. I'll have an interview with Arnett up in the next little while, to correspond with something on the Furies/DOA show I've done for Discorder. Meantime, next month, make sure to check out the Terry Chikowski interview in Nerve Magazine - he was the security guard injured in the Litton Industries blast, back in the days of the so-called Squamish Five. There'll also be a brief piece on Nels Cline (in town Feb. 22, at a gig relocated from the Red Room to Richards on Richards).

Meantime, transcribing my Joey Shithead interview for the above article (and also for a longer piece I'm doin' for Razorcake), I made a fascinating discovery. To capture the flavours of Joe's speech - rich and earthy and charming - I was writing fuckin', as an adjective - not fucking, but fuckin' - and my spellcheck wasn't recognizing it. Not surprising - anytime you drop the "g" to give a more "spoken" feeling to an -ing word, the spellcheck balks and underlines it in red. The thing was, in the list of "alternatives" they suggested - I checked, for the hell of it - "fucking" was not among them! SPELLCHECKS DO NOT OFFER PROFANE SUGGESTIONS! I guess they don't want to scare old grannies who disapprove of such language by it popping up on a list of options. The discovery has prompted whole minutes of fun. If you render "asshole" as "ashole," it also does not suggest "asshole" as a possible spelling (even though it recognizes "asshole" as a word). "Ashore," yes, but not "asshole!" Next I tried writing, "I like your titts," with two T's, and got as a list of suggestions "tats, tilts, tints, tots" and "twits" - NO TITS!!!! There's a George Carlin routine in this somewhere...